Staff Software Engineer - dbt Core

About Us

Fivetran and dbt Labs are bringing together two industry-leading companies with a shared mission: helping organizations unlock the full value of their data.

Together, we’re delivering the data infrastructure layer that helps organizations move, transform, and trust their data — from the moment data moves, through every transformation, to the context teams and AI systems rely on.

Fivetran helps organizations automate data movement across the systems, clouds, engines, and tools they rely on. dbt Labs pioneered analytics engineering, helping teams transform data into reliable, governed insights. Together, we support thousands of organizations as they build a trusted foundation for analytics, AI, and better business decisions.

As we bring our teams and technology together, we’re building on the strengths of both companies while continuing to deliver the products and experiences our customers know and trust. It’s an exciting time to join us: we’re creating a company with the scale, talent, and technology to help more organizations put their data to work with greater speed, confidence, and impact.
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During this transition period, you may see references to both Fivetran and dbt Labs throughout our recruiting process as we integrate our teams, systems, and career sites.

About the Role

Our mission is to empower data practitioners to create and disseminate organizational knowledge. dbt Core is the open-source engine at the heart of this mission, used by tens of thousands of analysts and engineers to transform data with the rigor of software engineering. We are looking for a systems-oriented engineer to join the small, expert team that builds and maintains this foundational piece of the modern data stack. This is an opportunity to work on deeply technical, high-leverage problems where your contributions will improve the daily workflow of a massive and passionate open-source community.

About The Team

The dbt Core team are the stewards of the open-source engine that powers the modern data stack for tens of thousands of practitioners. This small, high-trust group of systems engineers tackles the most fundamental challenges in dbt: ensuring the performance, reliability, and architectural integrity of dbt itself. They not only own the core execution engine but also architect the crucial adapter framework that connects dbt to a growing ecosystem of databases and data platforms.

As a Staff Software Engineer on the Core & Adapters team, you will be a steward of the performance, reliability, and architectural integrity of dbt. You will tackle ambiguous, open-ended problems and take ownership of critical systems.

What You’ll Do

• Dive deep into the dbt-core execution engine, using your systems expertise to identify, debug, and eliminate performance bottlenecks in our Python codebase.

• Architect and implement improvements to our adapter interface, the crucial layer that connects dbt to a growing ecosystem of databases and data platforms, enabling the community to build more powerful and efficient integrations.

• Debug complex, system-level issues that span from Linux process management and concurrency models to database query planning and network protocols.

• Lead technical design discussions and contribute to the long-term architectural roadmap for dbt Core, making key decisions about what, how, and when we build to ensure its scalability and reliability for years to come.

• Mentor other engineers and review contributions from our vibrant open-source community, upholding our high standards for code quality, testing, and design while fostering a collaborative and inclusive environment.

• Take strong ownership of our distributed systems, troubleshoot complex production issues, and participate in an on-call rotation to maintain high availability and deliver a resilient platform experience.

Skills We’re Looking For

We are looking for an engineer with a strong performance and debugging mindset, excellent mental models for complex systems, and a deep curiosity for infrastructure and open-source software.

Required Qualifications:

• 6+ years of professional software development experience, with a focus on building and operating backend systems in a production environment.
• Deep backend engineering experience and proficiency in Python.
• A systematic, first-principles approach to problem-solving, with comfort navigating and debugging in Linux environments (e.g., understanding process scheduling, memory management, file systems).
• Solid grasp of database internals, such as query execution engines, storage layers, indexing strategies, and transaction management.
• Excellent communication skills and a sense of ownership, with the ability to balance technical depth with fast, iterative delivery.

Preferred Qualifications:

• A background in data warehousing, data engineering, or analytics engineering.
• Professional experience writing production code in Go or Rust.
• Experience contributing to or maintaining a popular open-source project.
• Experience building compilers, interpreters, or developer tooling.
• Familiarity with performance analysis tools like perf or strace.

The Team & Our Culture
You will join a small, high-trust team of senior and staff-level engineers who are passionate about building robust, well-crafted, and reliable software. We operate in a remote-first, asynchronous-friendly environment that values deep work, clear written communication, and a high degree of autonomy. We are deeply connected to our users and the open-source community, and we believe that the best solutions come from a rigorous, collaborative, and empathetic engineering process.

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