Software Engineer, Backend (Platform)

Hex is a company building a web-based notebook and app authoring platform. The Senior or Staff Software Engineer will join the Backend Platform team to build and maintain the core compute platform supporting code execution, SQL querying, and data processing, while improving usability, monitoring, speed, and performance. The role involves systems architecture, API design, performance optimization, and projects spanning backend data systems and the collaborative notebook interface.

Responsibilities:

• Using DuckDB to enable seamless data interoperability between Python and SQL code written by our users or AI agents
• Building intelligent caching systems to speed up customer data queries
• Implementing a graph-based dependency framework for optimizing multi-step execution plans
• Instrumenting complex, multi-language systems to identify performance bottlenecks
• Building visualizations into the product to help users understand the performance characteristics of their code

Requirements:

• 6+ years of engineering experience working on complex, data-driven systems or applications
• Expert-level understanding of Python, SQL, jupyter kernels, and/or data warehousing systems
• Deeply informed on industry trends around data processing, databases, and performant data architectures
• You love diving into highly complex codebases and have a passion for designing elegant abstractions that improve correctness and developer productivity
• An inexhaustible desire to understand where every millisecond of time could be going
• An instinct for strategic thinking and aligning with business and product goals while keeping a healthy balance of velocity and engineering excellence
• Experience working in a remote-first team and strong communication skills in this context
• This role is fully remote anywhere within the US Eastern timezone, with the option to work from our NYC office