Distributed Systems Engineer — Postgres Platform

About the role

What we do

ParadeDB is a Postgres-native alternative to Elasticsearch. We build state-of-the-art search (full-text, vector, and hybrid) and columnar analytics as a Postgres extension.

Companies like Modern Treasury, BILT Rewards, Alibaba Cloud, and many others use ParadeDB to:

- Eliminate ETL/change data capture tools

- Add transactional guarantees to their search indexes

- Perform JOINs on their search data

- Unify their search & transactional stack for agentic workloads

We're a small, focused team of engineers dedicated to creating an inclusive and enjoyable work environment. We’re primarily distributed across the United States and Canada, with a small office in San Francisco. We’re a Series A company with a flat structure, strong backing from investors, and plenty of room for growth.

What we want

We’re looking for a distributed systems engineer to join our team full-time and help build ParadeDB Cloud.

ParadeDB Cloud is our managed database platform built on Kubernetes and CloudNativePG. We're building a cloud-native control plane and Kubernetes operators that make it easy for customers to deploy and operate ParadeDB at scale.

The ideal candidate should have:

- Meaningful experience building distributed systems, cloud platforms, Kubernetes operators/controllers, or similarly complex infrastructure software

- A solid understanding of Kubernetes internals, including reconciliation loops, controllers, CRDs, and cloud-native architecture

- Experience designing and building APIs, control planes, orchestration systems, or automation frameworks that manage stateful infrastructure

- Experience developing production software in Go and operating reliable production systems on Kubernetes

- Familiarity with infrastructure tooling such as Terraform, Helm, and Bash/Python

- Experience with CloudNativePG, database operators, database-as-a-service platforms, or other stateful systems is a plus

- Familiarity with Elasticsearch-type workloads, analytical databases, or high-performance data systems is a plus

- Contributions to high-quality open-source projects and prior experience at a small, high-performing startup are a plus

We're seeking someone creative, independent, and excited by difficult technical challenges. You'll bring thoughtful opinions, learn quickly, engage directly with customers, and help us build a world-class product.

What you want

- You want to be part of the core team of a fast-growing infrastructure startup

- You want to build a cloud database platform from the ground up

- You’re passionate about distributed systems, databases, Kubernetes, and cloud infrastructure

- You’re excited to dive deep into Kubernetes and Postgres to build the best Postgres platform

- You’re excited about designing controllers, automation systems, and platform infrastructure that operate databases at scale