Backend Software Engineer - Infrastructure, Foundations

In this Backend Software Engineer role, you will build scalable data-driven backends for Palantir Foundry and Gotham, collaborating with cross-functional teams to solve complex problems. You’ll contribute to infrastructure that powers research, government, and enterprise use cases, balancing performance, security, and reliability. The position offers exposure to multiple teams and technologies, with room to grow into leadership through hands-on delivery. You will work in a fast-paced, mission-driven environment where impactful, robust APIs and systems matter.

• hybrid work options
• in-person collaboration emphasis
• opportunity to work from office based on business need
• focus on growth and well-being

• Build a performant search and indexing ecosystem for complex, permissioned data
• Contribute to open-source data processing libraries and integrate innovations for performance gains
• Develop distributed systems to power large-scale compute workloads and orchestrate containerized tasks
• Design architecture and APIs to guide developers toward simple, robust usage
• Implement tracing and performance observability in high-scale microservice architectures
• Create reliable, scalable storage/auth/asset-serving systems to support product teams
• Automate deployment, management, and operations of distributed systems (e.g., Cassandra, Elasticsearch, Kafka) across environments

• Engineering background in Computer Science, Mathematics, Software Engineering, Physics or similar field
• Strong coding skills in Java, C++, Python, Rust, or similar languages
• Familiarity with storage and data processing systems, cloud infrastructure, and related tools
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with ability to iterate quickly with teammates, and uphold quality

• Collaborates effectively with a variety of stakeholders
• Empathises and iterates with users and non-technical teammates
• Learns new technologies quickly
• Java, Rust, Go (and similar languages)
• Cassandra, Elasticsearch, Spark, Kafka, Kubernetes, Flink
• Gradle, GitHub