Senior/Staff Software Engineer, LocalStack
Data Platform Emulators
+ Performance-based Bonuses
Cloud development platform
Open for applications
Cloud development platform
21-100 employees
Open for applications
+ Performance-based Bonuses
21-100 employees
Company mission
To empower developers to rapidly build and test their cloud applications, saving valuable time and resources.
Role
Who you are
- As our customer base is growing and we’re seeing an increasing influx of users who are eager to leverage additional features, we are looking for a strong lead to take our data platform emulators to the next level
- Strong hands-on experience with modern Python development (type hinting, unit/integration testing with pytest, object-oriented software design)
- Strong background in data processing, fundamentals in operating systems, and systems programming in Unix environments
- Strong understanding of SQL, different types of DDL/DML/DQL/DCL/DTL queries, syntactical differences between different flavors of SQL
- Strong understanding of sessions and transactions in relational databases, transaction isolation levels, managing remote and potentially distributed transactions
- Strong proficiency with PostgreSQL, running and configuring Postgres servers, writing custom functions with different language extensions (psql, plpython, plv8)
- Experience with cloud computing APIs and platforms like AWS or Azure
- Ideally hands-on experience working with data platforms like Snowflake and/or AWS Athena, Glue, Redshift
- Experience with SQL parsing, query AST modification libraries like sqlglot or others
- Decent knowledge of Java and the ecosystem of open-source bigdata platforms, including Presto, Hive, Hadoop, Spark, etc
- Prior experience contributing to open source projects on Github is a plus
- Experience with compiler technologies and lexers/parsers is a plus
What the job involves
- We are looking for a lead software engineer who can spearhead the development of our data platform emulators
- LocalStack provides several localized versions of cloud-based data platforms, allowing our users to run their data pipelines directly on the local machine (or in CI pipelines), without requiring any connectivity to the real cloud
- Among others, we provide support for AWS Athena, AWS RDS/Redshift, and AWS Glue, and more recently a first version of a Snowflake emulator running entirely locally, in Docker
- With our work at LocalStack we’re filling an important gap in the industry - most vendors at this point do not bother providing a fully local dev experience, however there is huge demand from the developer community to work with local tooling, take the data infrastructure with them on their laptop, and even work offline
- The Snowflake emulator is currently in private beta, and so far there’s been great excitement among the beta customers who are evaluating this early version which we’re now further building out
- The ground-breaking solutions we’re implementing involve several exciting challenges - making the functionality of powerful data platforms available on the local machine in a lightweight and performance-optimized manner
- Oftentimes this includes configuring and running database products like PrestoDB/TrinoDB, Apache Spark, or a PostgreSQL server on the local machine or in Docker, and then adding the required configuration, glue code and integrations to provide an API that closely resembles the behaviour of the real cloud system
- We are developing innovative solutions to customize and extend database systems we’re building upon, for example creating custom plugins, extension functions, or SQL transformers that transpile queries from a source into a target format
- To ensure that our implementation provides maximum parity with the real system, we employ a mechanism called snapshot testing that helps us create high-fidelity integration tests that systematically cover the entire API surface area
- You’ll be working with a top-notch team of highly motivated and exceptionally skilled individuals who are all contributing towards our shared vision of providing the best local cloud development experience out there
- Drive and co-own the development of our Snowflake emulator - this is a brand-new product we’re bringing to the market, with a sizeable number of interested beta users already evaluating the private beta version
- Reverse-engineer data platform APIs and queries to reproduce the behaviour locally based on off-the-shelf database products and tools (e.g., Postgres, TrinoDB)
- Write comprehensive unit and integration tests to ensure our implementation is on par with the real system
- Conduct technical spikes to evaluate new tools and technologies, document the process and insights on all key architectural decisions made
- Integrate suitable open source tools into our solutions, and contribute back to open source projects
- Maintain documentation about the internal implementation details, as well as technical roadmaps for new features with milestones and basic effort estimations
- Conduct performance evaluations, and apply various optimizations in the ongoing implementation, as applicable (e.g., lazy evaluation, operator pruning, parallel processing, etc)
- Run internal demos and knowledge sharing sessions to educate the team on the developments in the data platform emulators space
- Communicate directly with our customers in different support channels to understand their requirements and use cases, create reproducible samples, and help them resolve any technical issues
- Work with our Data team to embed analytics into the product and ensure that we gain insights into common usage patterns and edge cases, learn how we can improve the product, and proactively detect user issues early on
Our take
Developers can face high costs and delays with cloud-based testing (as centralised cloud environments are complex and expensive to maintain), which slows down development. This means that solutions to reduce these challenges are crucial for improving productivity.
LocalStack is solving this issue by providing a virtual environment that lets developers run a complete AWS setup on their laptops, cutting deployment times from 28 minutes to 24 seconds. It supports over 100 AWS services, reducing cloud costs and streamlining testing.
In an exciting move, the company raised substantial funding which will go towards expanding into the US and further developing its platform. With plans to offer new features like chaos engineering, LocalStack is ready to transform cloud development across multiple platforms.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Few candidates hear
back within 2 weeks
Company
Funding (1 round)
Nov 2024
$25m
SERIES A
Total funding: $25m
Company benefits
- Opportunities for professional development and training
- Dynamic and collaborative work environment
- Flexible work arrangements
Company values
- People first: People come first, as they are at the heart of everything we do. We're on a mission to build a product that developers love, and a workplace where everyone thrives. When people enjoy what they work on, who they work with, and how they work, productivity will follow. This is true for us just as it is for our customers
- One size does not fit all: People first also means realizing that everyone is different, and needs different things to be productive. A person may be held back in one environment, but thrive in another. The same is true for projects and how we work on them. We embrace diverse work styles and empower individuals to be their best taking all their unique strengths and weakness into account
- Through failure we learn: We are a young and growing company venturing into the unknown. Whatever we do right now may not work three months from now. We may introduce processes or tools that we think are a good idea, but turn out not to work. Question the status quo and put forth new ideas, backed by informed arguments. Own it when they fail! If we accept and embrace these failures, we can learn together and ultimately grow closer as a team
- Embracing distributed decision making: We believe in the power of individual ownership and distributed decision making. As a young and dynamic organization we can only scale if we have efficient mechanisms in place that prevent bottlenecks. Distributed decision making is all about trust—which we can achieve by focusing on transparency, accountability, and feedback mechanisms
Company HQ
Lindenhof, Zürich, ZH
Articles
Leadership
Gerta S.
(Co-Founder & COO / Co-CEO)Previously spent 3 years at Tricentis where they worked as a Global Digital Transformation Strategist, Global Diversity Program Lead and Product Manager in AI/ML. Prior to that, they were a Project / Product Manager and Business Process Analyst at runIT Solutions.
Waldemar Hummer
(Co-Founder & CTO / Co-CEO)Previously the Head of Engineering at Zurich Insurance Company and CTO / VP of Engineering at Advanon. Was also a Cloud/AI Tech Lead and Architect at IBM, and Development Team Lead at Atlassian.
Thomas Rausch
(Co-Founder & Head of Engineering)Founder of Cognitive XR where they serve as the Technical Lead. They graduated from the Vienna University of Technology with a PhD in Computer Science and worked as a University Assistant while there.
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