Staff Software Engineer

Starburst is the data platform for analytics, applications, and AI, unifying data across clouds and on-premises to accelerate AI innovation. Organizations—from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises in 60+ countries—rely on Starburst for fast data access, seamless collaboration, and enterprise‑grade governance on an open hybrid data lakehouse.

About the role

As a Staff Engineer on the Spark Job Manager and Starburst Enterprise team, you will own critical backend and platform components that orchestrate distributed compute (Spark, Trino) for enterprise customers. You will lead the design and implementation of JVM‑based services and the surrounding infrastructure, including Kubernetes deployments, Docker image strategy, CI/CD automation, AWS integrations, and secure enterprise authentication flows. This role requires architectural leadership, cross‑team influence, and long‑term platform ownership.

Responsibilities

• Own backend and platform components that orchestrate distributed compute for enterprise customers.
• Design and implement JVM‑based services and the surrounding infrastructure—Kubernetes, Docker, CI/CD, AWS, and authentication flows.
• Provide architectural leadership, cross‑team influence, and long‑term platform ownership.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional backend experience, with strong expertise in Java and production‑ready JVM services.
• Experience designing and operating distributed systems in production; familiarity with Spark, Trino/Presto, or comparable engines is a plus.
• Extensive experience designing and evolving RESTful APIs, including validation, error modeling, pagination, filtering, backward‑compatible versioning, and OpenAPI documentation.
• Infrastructure & Operations
• Hands‑on production experience with Kubernetes (manifests/Helm charts) and Docker (multi‑stage builds, optimization, security best practices).
• Experience owning CI/CD for complex Java codebases, using GitHub Actions or Jenkins.
• Practical AWS experience with S3 or compatible storage, IAM, and AWS SSO.
• Familiarity with secure authentication mechanisms: OAuth2/OIDC, token‑based auth, and session management.
• Experience implementing monitoring (Prometheus preferred), distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry), and structured logging for JVM services is a plus.
• Staff‑Level Impact
• Proven experience leading architecture across multiple services or systems.
• Demonstrated ability to drive cross‑team RFCs, break down ambiguous problems, influence engineering standards, and raise the technical bar through code reviews and mentorship.
• Own long‑term platform health, not just feature delivery.
• Highly Preferred Experience
• Building job orchestration platforms.
• Enterprise/B2B experience.
• Strong Python skills for automation and tooling.
• Experience running systems in hybrid or on‑prem environments.
• Collaboration on open‑source projects is a strong plus.
• Travel: 25% in‑person travel for onboarding, offsites, customer engagements, and company events.

Location

This role is based in the Warsaw office and follows a hybrid model, with an expectation of being onsite 2‑3 days per week.

Compensation

Salary range: 440,000 – 540,000 PLN per annum.

Benefits

Starburst offers a competitive Total Rewards program, including competitive pay, attractive stock grants, flexible paid time off, and more.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Starburst provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws.