Staff Infrastructure Software Engineer, Metadata
Dropbox
Staff Infrastructure Software Engineer, Metadata
Job Description
Role Description
Responsibilities
Requirements
- BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science or related technical field involving coding (e.g., physics or mathematics), or equivalent technical experience
Preferred Qualifications
US Zone 1
$240,600—$325,500 USD
US Zone 2
$216,500—$292,900 USD
US Zone 3
$192,400—$260,400 USD
Locations
- US: All locations, United States (Remote)
Salary
Salary details available upon request
Estimated Salary Rangemedium confidence
280,000 - 450,000 USD / yearly
Source: ai estimated
* This is an estimated range based on market data and may vary based on experience and qualifications.
Skills Required
- advanced software development skills in at least two modern programming languages (e.g., Go, C++, Java, Rust, Python)intermediate
- distributed systems design and operationintermediate
- consistency models, consensus protocols, partitioning, replication, and latency tradeoffsintermediate
- operating large-scale, transactional database systemsintermediate
- project leadership skillsintermediate
- debugging and incident response skillsintermediate
- on-call rotations and post-incident analysisintermediate
- communication and collaboration abilitiesintermediate
- operating and maintaining large-scale distributed systems in cloud environmentsintermediate
Required Qualifications
- BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science or related technical field involving coding (e.g., physics or mathematics), or equivalent technical experience (experience)
- 10+ years of advanced software development skills in at least two modern programming languages (e.g., Go, C++, Java, Rust, Python, etc), with the ability to learn and work across multiple stacks (experience)
- Deep expertise in distributed systems design and operation, including mastery of principles like consistency models, consensus protocols, partitioning, replication, and latency tradeoffs (experience)
- Experience operating large-scale, transactional database systems in production — particularly as the source of truth in a high-availability, multi-tenant infrastructure environment (experience)
- Demonstrated project leadership skills, including technical design, work breakdown, multi-workstream coordination, estimation, and milestone planning for high-impact infrastructure (experience)
- Strong debugging and incident response skills, including hands-on experience in on-call rotations and post-incident analysis for critical infrastructure (experience)
- Excellent communication and collaboration abilities, including cross-functional influence, mentoring, and the ability to articulate complex system tradeoffs to varied audiences (experience)
- Proven experience operating and maintaining large-scale distributed systems in cloud environments, supporting high-throughput workloads (e.g., systems serving 10M+ QPS or equivalent read/write intensity) (experience)
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience building or scaling metadata systems, distributed databases, or data-access platforms (e.g., RocksDB, Cassandra, CockroachDB, Spanner, MySQL, or similar) (experience)
- Deep understanding and real world experience with consensus protocols and coordination systems such as Raft, Paxos, ZooKeeper, or etcd (experience)
- Experience designing and optimizing cache coherence, read/write paths, or consistency layers at the storage or service tier (experience)
- Contributions to developer productivity or self-service tooling in large-scale infrastructure organizations (experience)
- Strong technical mentorship or leadership experience, especially in influencing org-wide engineering direction and up-leveling peers (experience)
- Demonstrated experience in designing, implementing, and managing Disaster Recovery (DR) strategies and solutions (experience)
Responsibilities
- Design and operate Dropbox’s core metadata infrastructure — distributed, transactional systems that serve as the foundation for nearly all products and internal engineering workflows
- Define and drive the multi-year technical strategy for Dropbox’s metadata database stacks, including storage engines, distributed consensus, caching layers, and access APIs
- Lead architecture and implementation efforts that evolve how transactional metadata is modeled, stored, and accessed across Dropbox’s global infrastructure
- Identify and solve high-impact, deeply technical problems involving scale, availability, consistency, and latency — navigating ambiguity with strong system-level thinking
- Drive cross-functional technical alignment by partnering with platform, product, and infrastructure teams to ensure metadata systems meet the needs of the business and other engineers
- Serve as a technical leader and role model, mentoring engineers, shaping engineering culture, and contributing to Dropbox’s high hiring bar through recruiting and interviews
- Advance operational excellence by building resilient systems, participating in the on-call rotation, and continuously improving reliability through thoughtful design and rigorous post-incident analysis
- Evaluate emerging technologies and integrate industry best practices that enable Dropbox to stay ahead in scale, performance, and developer productivity
Tags & Categories
Staff Infrastructure Software Engineer, Metadata
Dropbox
Staff Infrastructure Software Engineer, Metadata
Job Description
Role Description
Responsibilities
Requirements
- BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science or related technical field involving coding (e.g., physics or mathematics), or equivalent technical experience
Preferred Qualifications
US Zone 1
$240,600—$325,500 USD
US Zone 2
$216,500—$292,900 USD
US Zone 3
$192,400—$260,400 USD
Locations
- US: All locations, United States (Remote)
Salary
Salary details available upon request
Estimated Salary Rangemedium confidence
280,000 - 450,000 USD / yearly
Source: ai estimated
* This is an estimated range based on market data and may vary based on experience and qualifications.
Skills Required
- advanced software development skills in at least two modern programming languages (e.g., Go, C++, Java, Rust, Python)intermediate
- distributed systems design and operationintermediate
- consistency models, consensus protocols, partitioning, replication, and latency tradeoffsintermediate
- operating large-scale, transactional database systemsintermediate
- project leadership skillsintermediate
- debugging and incident response skillsintermediate
- on-call rotations and post-incident analysisintermediate
- communication and collaboration abilitiesintermediate
- operating and maintaining large-scale distributed systems in cloud environmentsintermediate
Required Qualifications
- BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science or related technical field involving coding (e.g., physics or mathematics), or equivalent technical experience (experience)
- 10+ years of advanced software development skills in at least two modern programming languages (e.g., Go, C++, Java, Rust, Python, etc), with the ability to learn and work across multiple stacks (experience)
- Deep expertise in distributed systems design and operation, including mastery of principles like consistency models, consensus protocols, partitioning, replication, and latency tradeoffs (experience)
- Experience operating large-scale, transactional database systems in production — particularly as the source of truth in a high-availability, multi-tenant infrastructure environment (experience)
- Demonstrated project leadership skills, including technical design, work breakdown, multi-workstream coordination, estimation, and milestone planning for high-impact infrastructure (experience)
- Strong debugging and incident response skills, including hands-on experience in on-call rotations and post-incident analysis for critical infrastructure (experience)
- Excellent communication and collaboration abilities, including cross-functional influence, mentoring, and the ability to articulate complex system tradeoffs to varied audiences (experience)
- Proven experience operating and maintaining large-scale distributed systems in cloud environments, supporting high-throughput workloads (e.g., systems serving 10M+ QPS or equivalent read/write intensity) (experience)
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience building or scaling metadata systems, distributed databases, or data-access platforms (e.g., RocksDB, Cassandra, CockroachDB, Spanner, MySQL, or similar) (experience)
- Deep understanding and real world experience with consensus protocols and coordination systems such as Raft, Paxos, ZooKeeper, or etcd (experience)
- Experience designing and optimizing cache coherence, read/write paths, or consistency layers at the storage or service tier (experience)
- Contributions to developer productivity or self-service tooling in large-scale infrastructure organizations (experience)
- Strong technical mentorship or leadership experience, especially in influencing org-wide engineering direction and up-leveling peers (experience)
- Demonstrated experience in designing, implementing, and managing Disaster Recovery (DR) strategies and solutions (experience)
Responsibilities
- Design and operate Dropbox’s core metadata infrastructure — distributed, transactional systems that serve as the foundation for nearly all products and internal engineering workflows
- Define and drive the multi-year technical strategy for Dropbox’s metadata database stacks, including storage engines, distributed consensus, caching layers, and access APIs
- Lead architecture and implementation efforts that evolve how transactional metadata is modeled, stored, and accessed across Dropbox’s global infrastructure
- Identify and solve high-impact, deeply technical problems involving scale, availability, consistency, and latency — navigating ambiguity with strong system-level thinking
- Drive cross-functional technical alignment by partnering with platform, product, and infrastructure teams to ensure metadata systems meet the needs of the business and other engineers
- Serve as a technical leader and role model, mentoring engineers, shaping engineering culture, and contributing to Dropbox’s high hiring bar through recruiting and interviews
- Advance operational excellence by building resilient systems, participating in the on-call rotation, and continuously improving reliability through thoughtful design and rigorous post-incident analysis
- Evaluate emerging technologies and integrate industry best practices that enable Dropbox to stay ahead in scale, performance, and developer productivity
Tags & Categories