Senior Backend Engineer

### About the Role We're looking for a **Senior Backend Engineer** to own and scale the infrastructure behind one of the most widely adopted open-source LLM engineering platforms in the world — processing terabytes of AI tracing data per day for thousands of AI teams, including a significant portion of the Fortune 50. We're a small, engineering-heavy team building what many consider the "Datadog" of LLM observability. We sit at the intersection of open source, high-throughput data infrastructure, and applied AI — and we're now part of a leading columnar database company, which means the engineers who built the database you'll be optimizing are a Slack message away. This is a **hybrid role** based in EU timezones, with approximately **one week per month** in our Berlin office. You can be based anywhere in the EU. _Visa sponsorship is not available — you must be legally authorized to work in the EU._ ### What You'll Do * **Own and optimize the ingestion pipeline:** Work on throughput, latency, reliability, and cost efficiency across a high-volume data pipeline that flows from our API through to a ClickHouse-backed analytics store. * **Make ClickHouse sing:** Design and evolve schemas, write and tune complex analytical queries, and partner with ClickHouse engineers to push the limits of what's possible at petabyte scale. * **Build backend abstractions:** Create reusable, well-documented building blocks so that product engineers can ship data-heavy features without reinventing infrastructure each time. * **Operate production systems:** Run and improve cloud deployments across multiple production environments — handling capacity planning, incident response, and monitoring with SRE discipline. * **Make self-hosting effortless:** Maintain and improve deployment tooling from a single Docker Compose setup all the way to enterprise-grade Helm chart deployments on Kubernetes. * **Contribute to open source:** Everything you ship is public and immediately used by developers worldwide — participate in PR reviews, issue triage, and community engagement. ### What We're Looking For **Required:** * Based in the EU and able to work EU timezones; willing to be in Berlin approximately one week per month * Legally authorized to work in the EU without company visa sponsorship * Hands-on experience with **ClickHouse or other columnar/analytical databases** — schema design, query optimization, and managing large-scale analytical workloads * Experience designing, building, and operating **high-throughput data pipelines** (streaming and/or batch) capable of processing terabytes of data per day * Production experience with **observability and distributed tracing systems** (metrics, logs, traces) for large-scale, low-latency services * Experience deploying and operating services with **Docker and Kubernetes**, and applying SRE practices such as capacity planning, incident response, and monitoring * Proven ability to take **end-to-end ownership** of backend/platform components and work autonomously in a small, fast-moving engineering team * 3+ years of backend or full-stack engineering experience **Nice to Have:** * Experience contributing to or maintaining **open-source projects** — including PR reviews, issue triage, and community workflows * Background at companies working in AI/ML tooling, data infrastructure, or observability ### Compensation & Benefits * **Salary:** €90,000 – €160,000 per year, depending on experience * Meaningful equity in a well-backed, high-growth company (previously Series A/B stage investors; now part of a larger technology organization) * Small team = large scope and direct impact on product and architecture * Work with — and get direct access to — world-class database engineers at the infrastructure layer you depend on daily * Flexible remote-first culture with regular in-person time in Berlin ### Location This role is open to candidates across the **EU** working in EU timezones. The team meets in person in **Berlin, Germany** approximately one week per month. Fully remote otherwise. **Visa sponsorship is not available.** Find more [English Speaking Jobs in Germany](https://www.arbeitnow.com/english-speaking-jobs) on Arbeitnow