Principal Software Engineer - Data Lakes

ABOUT THE ROLE We're seeking a highly skilled Principal Software Engineer to contribute to the technical architecture, design, and development of Fivetran's Managed Data Lake product offering. As a key member of a senior engineering team, you'll partner with product and engineering teams to build scalable, high-performance systems, advance open-source technologies, and set technical standards that raise the bar across the organization. WHAT YOU'LL DO As a Principal Software Engineer on our data lakes team, you'll be responsible for: - Partnering closely with product teams to understand requirements and designing cutting-edge new capabilities that go directly into customers' hands - Designing, developing, implementing, and operating highly reliable large-scale data lake systems in cooperation with a dedicated data lake engineering team - Contributing to open-source projects such as DuckDB and Polaris - Embracing Fivetran innovations with open-source standards and toolsets - Analyzing fault-tolerance and high availability issues, performance and scale challenges, and solving them - Ensuring operational excellence of the services and meeting the commitments to our customers regarding security, reliability, availability, and performance - Setting technical directions and influencing cross-functional teams WHAT YOU'LL NEED To succeed in this role, you'll need: - 6+ years of hands-on or research experience with high-performance relational data management systems - A deep understanding of infrastructure & software optimizations and performance engineering to drive significant performance, latency, and availability improvements - A proven track record of leading and delivering large and complicated projects - Strong development skills in Java and C++ - Solid experience with public clouds (AWS, Azure, GCP) - Demonstrated knowledge of columnar storage formats - A growth mindset and excitement about breaking the status quo by seeking innovative solutions - Excellent team player who is consistent in making everyone around you better WHY REMOTE This is a full-time remote position based in Germany, offering the flexibility to work from anywhere while being part of a global team. BENEFITS - Competitive salary - Comprehensive health plan - Parental leave - Education stipend - Life insurance - Equipment stipend - Flexible schedule - Opportunities for professional growth and development