Software Engineer - Postgres Internals

PlanetScale is growing rapidly and reinventing the database space. As a PostgreSQL Core Engineer, you will contribute upstream to the PostgreSQL core engine and maintain Postgres extensions that power PlanetScale's offerings.

Responsibilities:

• Author and review patches to the PostgreSQL core engine: performance, features, bug fixes, and security — landed through the pgsql-hackers mailing list and the Commitfest process
• Maintain Postgres extensions, both open-source (community projects we depend on) and proprietary (Planetscale-owned). Includes feature work, bug fixes, performance tuning, and major-version compatibility
• Review community patches with rigor on correctness, stability, and PostgreSQL coding conventions
• Engage the PostgreSQL community in design discussions, the 5 (five) annual Commitfests, and conferences
• Root-cause Postgres issues affecting Planetscale customers and turn fixes into upstream patches when applicable
• Improve documentation for PostgreSQL and our extensions as part of every change

Requirements:

• Strong C programming skills in large, established codebases
• Deep knowledge of PostgreSQL internals: MVCC, query planner/executor, WAL, vacuum, replication, memory contexts
• Demonstrated open-source contributions to PostgreSQL or comparable database projects (accepted patches, reviews, or extensions)
• Fluency with Git and the PostgreSQL patch workflow
• Comfortable in Linux/BSD development environments; able to profile and benchmark database workloads
• PostgreSQL contribution history
• Experience authoring or maintaining a Postgres extension end-to-end (e.g., pgvector, pg_stat_statements, PostGIS)
• Background in distributed systems, storage engines, or query optimization
• Public talks, papers, or blog posts in the Postgres ecosystem