Staff Software Engineer, Data Systems & Performance

Opportunity StratusGrid delivers a high-trust, high-competence customer experience around cloud optimization, and we're productizing that expertise into our agentic platform, Stratusphere. We are looking for a staff+ software engineer to help create the technical architecture and development of our data systems optimization products and integrations, while also shaping and improving the data systems behind Stratusphere itself. You will work across data systems and cloud infrastructure, contribute production code, and lead technical design for new features you develop. Partnering with product engineering, forward deployed engineers (FDEs), and customers, you will test and implement optimizations in real environments and turn proven approaches into reusable platform capabilities. Customer workloads range from a few gigabytes to many petabytes across AWS and Azure today, with additional clouds ahead. We are looking for a systems thinker with broad expertise, as our scope includes PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, MongoDB, DynamoDB, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, and Amazon Redshift, alongside lakehouse and analytical systems. Our current platform uses Apache Iceberg tables in Amazon S3 with Athena and Starburst. Experience with Databricks and other lakehouse and analytical platforms will help expand our capabilities. RESPONSIBILITIES • Technical Architecture: Drive architecture, interfaces, and engineering standards for data optimization products. Lead technical design for new features you develop, communicate tradeoffs, guide implementation, and design for expansion across clouds and data systems. • Agent-First Product Development: Use and oversee AI agents to build, test, and mature Stratusphere features, backend services, customer integrations, analysis tools, and user-facing workflows. Contribute production code and improve the platform's own data architecture, performance, and reliability. • Data Systems Optimization: Diagnose bottlenecks across queries, schemas, indexes, caching, data layout, compute, storage, and networking. Evaluate sizing, scaling, concurrency, and workload changes against customer performance, reliability, governance, and cost goals. • Customer Validation & Product Partnership: Work with FDEs, Product, and customer teams to identify opportunities, establish baselines, test hypotheses, and implement optimizations. Measure results, document tradeoffs, and turn repeatable findings into roadmap priorities, features, and integrations. • Engineering Judgment & Safe Automation: Take responsibility for AI-generated plans, code, queries, and recommendations. Ensure implementations are tested, maintainable, scalable, and secure, with appropriate access boundaries, change controls, auditability, and rollback. • Agent Improvement Feedback Loop: Identify recurring agent errors and missing context. Improve architecture, tooling, prompts, evaluation criteria, and workflows with Product and FDEs to measurably improve analysis quality and execution safety. • Add to the Foundation: Stay current with the latest methods and best practices for improving velocity, quality, and maintainability with agent-first development approaches. Share knowledge and actively contribute to maturing the processes, standards, and tooling that make the whole team better. • Cross-Functional Collaboration: Share context in visible channels, ask questions early, and work openly with Engineering, Product, FDEs, and customers. Surface assumptions and disagreements constructively so teams can learn quickly and make informed decisions. • Execution with Reliability & Urgency: Own work end to end, capture commitments, communicate progress proactively, escalate risks early, and close the loop. Follow change-control and customer experience standards, maintain clear documentation, and keep work records current. REQUIREMENTS • Staff-Level Technical Leadership: Demonstrated ownership of architecture and implementation for complex production systems, with the ability to guide decisions across teams, influence through clear reasoning, and remain deeply hands-on. • Proven Optimization Results: A track record of improving complex data systems using profiling, query plans, observability, and representative benchmarks. Explain measured improvements in latency, throughput, reliability, or cost and the tradeoffs involved. • Multifaceted Data Systems Expertise: Deep relational database expertise and substantial optimization experience in at least one additional category: search, document or key-value systems, or analytical platforms. Strong SQL, data modeling, indexing, and distributed systems fundamentals. • Iceberg & Query Engines: Hands-on familiarity with Apache Iceberg and distributed query engines such as Athena, Starburst, or Trino. Understand partitioning, file sizing and compaction, metadata and statistics, and their effects on performance and cost. • Software Engineering & Adaptability: Deep proficiency in at least one programming language and the ability to contribute across backend services, APIs, integrations, and frontend workflows. Learn new languages, frameworks, and data systems quickly and critically review AI-assisted work across the stack. • Testing & CI/CD: Architect services for layered testing and build automated delivery checks that catch defects early. Validate correctness, performance, and failure behavior while developing rapidly with AI agents. • Observability: Integrate and use metrics, logs, traces, and data-system diagnostics to investigate complex problems, establish baselines, and verify improvements in production. • Cloud & Infrastructure Engineering: Experience working in production cloud environments and managing infrastructure with infrastructure as code (IaC). • AI as a Daily Tool: Use AI and coding agents effectively for analysis, planning, implementation, and testing. Take ownership of AI-assisted work and remain accountable for its quality, security, and cost. • Excellent Communication: Translate complex findings into clear technical and business decisions. Listen to customer concerns, explain risks and tradeoffs with empathy, and turn incomplete information into actionable next steps. • Startup Environment & Ambiguity: Operate effectively in a fast-paced startup with evolving priorities and incomplete requirements. Identify the most valuable problems, make pragmatic decisions, test assumptions, and deliver in useful increments while maintaining engineering quality and customer trust. • Strong Ownership & Urgency: Take initiative without waiting for detailed direction, meet commitments, adapt priorities thoughtfully, and communicate status and risks early. Balance delivery speed with reliability, maintainability, and follow-through. • Travel: Willingness and ability to travel to our Chattanooga, Tennessee headquarters quarterly, with flexibility to travel up to monthly as needed for collaboration and team planning. • Remote-Work-Ready: This is a remote role. Work effectively in a distributed team with reliable high-speed internet, a professional workspace, and the ability to communicate, collaborate, and execute independently. • Work Authorization & Customer Access: Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States at the time of hire. Must be eligible and able to meet applicable customer requirements for working in GovCloud and CJIS-regulated environments, including required background screening, security training, and access restrictions. NICE-TO-HAVE / DIFFERENTIATORS • Databricks & Analytics: Databricks experience is strongly preferred, including Spark, Delta Lake, and workload optimization. Experience with other lakehouse and analytical platforms, such as Snowflake, Microsoft Fabric, Azure Synapse Analytics, Google BigQuery, or Amazon Redshift, is also valuable. • Application Stack & Caching: TypeScript, React/Next.js, and Python; caching systems and strategies; and experience building reusable optimization tooling or customer-facing data products. • Data Pipelines & Operations: Experience building high-quality, cost-effective data pipelines with tools such as dbt, together with strong DevOps practices and familiarity with policy as code. • Emerging Data Capabilities: Familiarity with graph data models and databases, vector search, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), including performance and retrieval-quality tradeoffs. • Location: Ideally located in the Chattanooga, Nashville, Atlanta, or Knoxville area to support quarterly collaboration at Chattanooga HQ, with flexibility for visits up to monthly. BENEFITS At StratusGrid, we invest in the health, well-being, and growth of our team. We offer competitive pay and a flexible benefits package that supports employees and their families at every stage. Full-time employees receive: • Competitive salary • Medical, dental, and vision insurance • Life insurance and short-term and long-term disability coverage • 401(k) plan • Flexible PTO, paid sick leave, and paid holidays Benefits may vary by location and employment status. EQUAL OPPORTUNITY & FAIR CHANCE HIRING StratusGrid is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered in accordance with applicable laws, including the California Fair Chance Act. ACCOMMODATIONS StratusGrid is committed to providing reasonable accommodations throughout the hiring process. If you need an accommodation, please note it in your application or contact us through our website. ABOUT STRATUSGRID StratusGrid is building Stratusphere, a multi-agent platform that turns cloud complexity into measurable outcomes. Stratusphere coordinates specialized infrastructure agents to observe AWS and Azure environments, simulate policy-safe plans, and execute approved changes with auditability and rollback-ready safety, so savings compound over time, security improves, delivery accelerates, and teams spend less time on toil and fire drills. We're a team of builders and operators who care about trustworthy automation and real business impact. Our work sits at the intersection of cloud engineering, product, and customer outcomes, helping customers make infrastructure changes they can measure, explain, and stand behind. We'd love to meet you! #StratusGrid