Software Engineer

About us

At Dagster Labs, our mission is simple but ambitious: to empower every organization to build a productive, scalable data platform. We’re the brains behind Dagster, the open-source tool developers love, and Dagster+, our managed cloud. From scrappy startups to global enterprises, thousands of teams trust us to power the data behind their analytics, machine learning, and AI breakthroughs.

We believe the AI era runs on reliable, high-quality data. That’s why we make data platforms easier to test, easier to understand, and actually enjoyable to use. Dagster is quickly becoming the backbone of how the world builds intelligent systems.

We’re a small, well-funded team with big energy and a track record of shipping software people rave about. We aim high and work as a team, holding ourselves to the highest standards and trusting eachother to deliver. We care about how we work together: no egos, no drama, just a lot of curiosity and a drive to make something meaningful.

If you want to help shape the future of data and AI and have fun doing it, come build with us.

About the role

Dagster is an orchestration platform for the development, production, and observation of data assets. Our goal is to make Dagster Cloud the de facto hosted solution for structuring these systems. As a member of the Platform Engineering Team, you will help advance the foundations of our Dagster+ product by evolving our Platform API and the systems that underpin it. The Platform Team tackles some of the most complex engineering challenges at the company, spanning a wide range of domains from CI/CD systems to database performance, deep Python internals, and infrastructure primitives. This is fundamentally a software engineering role: you will collaborate with other engineers to design and build scalable systems that power Dagster Cloud, with a strong emphasis on writing high-quality code. While operational excellence is critical to our work, we are looking for engineers who approach platform problems with a builder’s mindset, not a purely operational one.

This is a full-time position offering competitive salary, equity, and benefits. We are a distributed team with offices in San Francisco, New York, and Minneapolis. We’re open to hiring fully remote candidates who are currently authorized to work within the United States. We offer flexible remote work options so you can choose the environment that makes you most productive—whether that’s your home or a coworking space. Dagster Labs fosters a collaborative, remote-first culture, ensuring you have all the tools and support needed to thrive, no matter where you are.

Responsibilities:

• Develop and optimize core backend systems and infrastructure components.
• Enhance efficiency, scalability, and stability of critical system resources through analysis and refinement.
• Partner with cross-functional teams to align on product development needs and deliver impactful solutions.
• Review designs and code to maintain high standards of quality and performance across the team.

Must-have Qualifications

• 5+ years of relevant software development experience
• Expertise in the full software development lifecycle, from scoping and planning to delivery and iteration
• Strong command of software system design, including scalability, third party integrations, and API design
• Fluent in Python
• Strong written and oral communication skills
• Experience in a high-functioning engineering organization working on large-scale distributed systems or B2B SaaS applications
• Proven effectiveness at contributing to and executing as part of a team

Nice-to-have Qualifications

• Experience with a wide range of modern infrastructure tools and technologies
• Experience with using or supporting tools in the Modern Data Stack
• Experience building and scaling services built on Amazon Web Services, Kubernetes, & Postgres

Our Stack

Dagster is built in Python and TypeScript, and runs seamlessly across macOS, Linux, and Windows. Our frontend is powered by React and GraphQL, delivering a modern, intuitive developer experience. We value engineers who are comfortable working across the stack and making thoughtful contributions.

You belong here

We are committed to building an inclusive team and an open-source community where no one feels out of place. We know that teams with diverse backgrounds state their assumptions more explicitly, think more rigorously, and build better software. Plus it's more fun and interesting to work with a wide variety of perspectives.

You should apply to work at Dagster Labs if you want to work in, and help to build and strengthen, a high-performing software development environment where people of all backgrounds are welcome.

The estimated cash salary for this role is $185,000-$235,000.

Other resources

• The launch of Dagster blog post
• Launching Dagster Cloud to GA blog post
• The Data Engineering Impedance Mismatch blogpost/presentation
• What Dagster Believes About Data Platforms
• Software-Defined Assets blog post, Data Council talk, and animated explainer
• The April 2024 Dagster+ launch event

No recruiters please.