Staff Software Engineer

Astronomer empowers data teams to bring mission-critical software, analytics, and AI to life and is the company behind Astro, the industry-leading unified DataOps platform powered by Apache Airflow®. Astro accelerates building reliable data products that unlock insights, unleash AI value, and powers data-driven applications. Trusted by more than 700 of the world's leading enterprises, Astronomer lets businesses do more with their data. To learn more, visit www.astronomer.io.

Your background may be unconventional; as long as you have the essential qualifications, we encourage you to apply. While having "bonus" qualifications makes for a strong candidate, Astronomer values diverse experiences. Many of us at Astronomer haven't followed traditional career paths, and we welcome it if yours hasn't either.

About this role:

We are looking for a Technical Lead / Staff Software Engineer to join our core Software team at Astronomer. In this role, you will guide technical direction, lead critical architectural efforts, and ensure the team consistently delivers high-quality, maintainable software. You’ll be deeply involved in system design, cross-functional planning, and process optimization, while also mentoring engineers and supporting their growth.

You’ll work at the intersection of distributed systems, cloud-native infrastructure, and data platform tooling. If you enjoy solving complex problems in Kubernetes, care about engineering excellence, and thrive in a fast-moving, collaborative environment—this role is for you.

What you get to do:

• Own code quality, design decisions, and technical artifacts across the team’s work.

• Drive architectural direction and enforce engineering best practices.

• Collaborate with PM and EM on scoping, planning, and maintaining a prioritized roadmap.

• Drive technical conversations and strategy with customers, translating requirements into scalable solutions and influencing roadmap direction.

• Provide technical mentorship and delegate effectively to support team growth.

• Define and evolve team processes, including code review, testing, on-call, and dev experience.

• Lead retrospectives and drive continuous improvement initiatives.

• Contribute hands-on to core platform components using Nodejs, Golang, Python, Kubernetes, and Terraform.

What you bring to the role:

• Have 8+ years of backend or infrastructure engineering experience, with at least 2 years in a technical leadership role.

• Strong communication and collaboration skills to work with cross-functional teams across time zones.

• Experience driving technical strategy and conversations with customers, gathering feedback, and influencing product direction.

• Extensive experience with cloud providers like AWS, Azure, or GCP.

• Strong experience with Kubernetes, including hands-on experience testing systems running on K8s.

• Are proficient in Golang and/or Python, and comfortable working with distributed systems, container orchestration, and CI/CD.

• Have successfully led the design and execution of complex technical initiatives.

• Care deeply about team dynamics, process quality, and helping engineers grow.

• Thrive in a fast-paced, asynchronous, remote-first environment.

• Deep understanding of CI/CD tools such as GitHub Actions, CircleCI, and Jenkins.

• Familiarity with logging and observability tools: Prometheus, Grafana, Fluent Bit, ELK stack.

• Solid understanding of GitOps, Docker, and Helm charts.
  

Bonus points if you have:

• Experience with scale testing, disaster recovery, and capacity planning.

• Experience with at least one of the following languages: NodeJS, Go.

• Familiarity with Apache Airflow.

• Experience with Openshift and the Red Hat marketplace.

• Experience with the Prometheus/Grafana and ELK stacks.

The estimated salary for this role ranges from $200,000 - $230,000 based on leveling and geography, along with an equity component and a comprehensive benefits package. This range is merely an estimate; actual compensation may deviate from this range based on skills, experience, and qualifications.

#LI-Hybrid

At Astronomer, we value diversity. We are an equal opportunity employer: we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.  Astronomer is a remote-first company.