Senior Software Engineer, Office of the CTO - Astronomer

Astronomer empowers data teams to bring mission-critical software, analytics, and AI to life and is the company behind Astro, the industry-leading unified DataOps platform powered by Apache Airflow®. Astro accelerates building reliable data products that unlock insights, unleash AI value, and powers data-driven applications. Trusted by more than 700 of the world's leading enterprises, Astronomer lets businesses do more with their data. To learn more, visit www.astronomer.io.

Your background may be unconventional; as long as you have the essential qualifications, we encourage you to apply. While having "bonus" qualifications makes for a strong candidate, Astronomer values diverse experiences. Many of us at Astronomer haven't followed traditional career paths, and we welcome it if yours hasn't either.

About this role

Astronomer’s R&D team is laser-focused on delivering a great experience managing Apache Airflow at scale today. The Office of the CTO lives to define what the product should look like tomorrow.

The core of this role is to experiment with new ideas and build prototypes. As a Software Engineer in the Office of the CTO, you will act as a “hacker in residence” - someone with the freedom to experiment, explore big ideas, and validate concepts. You’ll be a generalist, working with whatever technology, tools, and programming languages are required to validate an idea. For the ideas that do work out, we work hand-in-hand with the broader product and engineering teams to turn the idea into a customer-facing feature or new product. 

There’s a particular focus on how Generative AI will change the lives of data professionals over the next 3-5 years. We want to lead the market with both a perspective and set of products on how AI will evolve from a human-driven copilot to a set of fully autonomous agents.

What you get to do:

• Act as a "hacker in residence," rapidly prototyping and validating ideas using diverse technologies.

• Collaborate with the R&D team to envision and prototype next-gen features for managing Apache Airflow at scale.

• Identify areas for improvement and devise innovative solutions aligned with Astronomer's long-term vision.

• Build LLM-based prototypes and features that meaningfully change the way data engineers work.

• Contribute to intellectual property, articles, and talks showcasing Astronomer's thought leadership.

• Communicate effectively, articulating research goals, progress, and outcomes.

• Convey complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.

What you bring to the role:

• Significant experience building software products. We’re not looking for experience with a specific tech stack, but we generally work Go, Python, and React/TypeScript.

• Strong communication and collaboration skills.

• Willingness to challenge the status quo and explore uncharted territories with technologies - or, put another way, an instinct to prove things for yourself instead of accepting conventional wisdom.

• Passion for dev tools, the data space, or open source technologies.

• Empathy for the customer/user experience of both Astronomer and Apache Airflow users.

• A bias for action and ability to work independently / think creatively.

Bonus points if you have:

• Familiarity with Apache Airflow or other data orchestration projects.

• Demonstrated contributions to open source projects.

• Exposure to unconventional career paths or startup environments.

• Demonstrated ability to work full-stack or understand new technologies and languages quickly.

• Experience building out prototypes and early-stage products or features, particularly with LLMs, vector databases, knowledge graphs, etc.

The estimated salary for this role ranges from $180,000 - $210,000 based on leveling and geography, along with an equity component and a comprehensive benefits package. This range is merely an estimate; actual compensation may deviate from this range based on skills, experience, and qualifications.

#LI-Hybrid

At Astronomer, we value diversity. We are an equal opportunity employer: we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.  Astronomer is a remote-first company.