Principal Software Engineer - Data Lakes

From Fivetran’s founding until now, our mission has remained the same: to make access to data as simple and reliable as electricity. With Fivetran, customer data arrives in their warehouses, canonical and ready to query, with no engineering or maintenance required. We’re proud that more organizations continue to leverage our technology every day to become truly data-driven.

About the Role

Fivetran is building data pipelines to power the modern data stack for thousands of companies.

We’re seeking a Principal Software Engineer to contribute to the technical architecture, design and development of Fivetran’s Managed Data Lake product offering. As part of a senior engineering team, you’ll partner with product and engineering teams to build scalable, high-performance systems, advance open-source technologies, and set technical standards that raise the bar across the organization.

This is a full-time remote position based out of Germany.

What You’ll Do

• Partner closely with product teams to understand requirements and design cutting-edge new capabilities that go directly into customer’s hands.
• Design, develop, implement, and operate highly reliable large-scale data lake systems in cooperation with a dedicated data lake engineering team.
• Contribute to open-source projects such as DuckDB and Polaris.
• Embrace Fivetran innovations with open-source standards and toolsets.
• Analyze fault-tolerance and high availability issues, performance and scale challenges, and solve them.
• Ensure operational excellence of the services and meet the commitments to our customers regarding security, reliability, availability, and performance.
• Set technical directions and influence cross-functional teams.
• 6+ years of hands‑on or research experience with high-performance relational data management systems.
• Deep understanding of infrastructure & software optimizations and performance engineering to drive significant performance, latency, and availability improvements.
• Proven track record of leading and delivering large and complicated projects.
• Strong development skills in Java and C++.
• Solid experience with public clouds (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Demonstrated knowledge of columnar storage formats.
• Growth mindset and excitement about breaking the status quo by seeking innovative solutions.
• Excellent team player who is consistent in making everyone around you better.

Bonus Skills

• Strongly prefer an MS or PhD in Computer Science, ideally focusing on database management and/or storage engines.

Perks and Benefits

• 100% employer-paid medical insurance*
• Generous paid time‑off policy (PTO), plus paid sick time, inclusive parental leave policy, holidays, and volunteer days off
• Professional development and training opportunities
• Company virtual happy hours, free food, and fun team‑building activities
• Monthly cell phone stipend
• Access to an innovative mental health support platform that offers personalized care and resources in areas such as: therapy, coaching, and self‑guided mindfulness exercises for all covered employees and their covered dependents.

* May vary by country and worker type - please reach out to your recruiter for more information

Click here to learn more about Fivetran's Benefits by Region.

We are committed to ensuring that all candidates have an equal opportunity to participate in our interview process. If you require accommodations at stage of the process due to a disability, medical condition, or any other circumstance, please don't hesitate to submit your request by filling out this form . We will work with you to provide reasonable accommodations to facilitate your participation and ensure a fair and accessible interview experience. Your request and any information provided will be kept confidential and will not impact your candidacy. We look forward to hearing from you and accommodating your needs to the best of our ability.