4-7+ years of hands-on development experience in building and shipping production systems or products.
Degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent professional experience.
Strong software engineering background with a focus on backend and distributed systems.
Experience with large-scale data systems processing terabytes or petabytes of data.
Familiarity with data modeling best practices and optimization of analytical query patterns.
Responsibilities
Architect and build core data platforms to handle data at scale with low latency.
Develop systems for long-term agent memory and reusable Customer Data Platform (CDP) primitives.
Implement optimization loops for personalized interactions that enhance business outcomes.
Ensure data is trustworthy, fast, and easy to use across the organization.
Create interactive OLAP querying systems and manage experimentation processes.
Benefits
Flexible (unlimited) paid time off
Medical, dental, and vision benefits for you and your family
Life insurance and disability benefits
Retirement plan dependent on country of employment
Parental leave
Fertility and family building benefits through Carrot
Lunch, as well as delicious snacks and coffee
Discretionary benefit stipend for personal spending
Free alphorn lessons
Full Job Description
What you'll do
You'll join a full-stack data team building the systems making our AI agents measurably smarter with every interaction, building the real-time pipelines, analytics products, and deep personalization primitives that turn millions of conversations into business outcomes. You'll work across these areas:
Data Foundations: Architect and build our core platform to handle data at scale with low latency. This includes our real-time eventing infrastructure, streaming and batch ETL pipelines, and our Iceberg-based data lakehouse. You will own the systems for interactive OLAP querying, orchestration, and experimentation, ensuring our data is trustworthy, fast, and easy to use for the entire organization.
Memory & Personalization: Power the next generation of intelligent experiences. You will develop the systems for long-term agent memory, build reusable Customer Data Platform (CDP) primitives, and implement the optimization loops that allow our agents to personalize interactions and demonstrably lift business outcomes.
What you'll bring
We're excited to meet candidates who bring depth in one of these areas:
Platform Engineering
You have designed, built, and operated large-scale data systems, processing terabytes or petabytes of data with technologies like Spark, Flink, Trino/Presto, and data lakehouse formats like Iceberg or Hudi.
You possess strong backend and distributed systems fundamentals in a language like Go, Scala, or Python. You understand the trade-offs of different storage engines, query plans, and data serialization formats.
You have a history of implementing pragmatic data governance, lineage, and testing. You've built platforms that are cost-aware, highly operable, and a delight for other engineers to build upon.
You're well-versed in data modeling best practices (dimensional modeling, star/snowflake schemas, slowly changing dimensions) and know how to optimize analytical query patterns for both traditional OLAP systems and modern cloud data warehouses.
Product Engineering
You have a portfolio of shipped data products, including analytics dashboards, data visualization tools, or alerting and exploration systems.
You are a skilled full-stack engineer (e.g., TypeScript/React and a service layer like Go), with a keen eye for performance, API design, and polish.
You excel at turning ambiguous questions into clear, intuitive interfaces. You have strong product sense around information architecture, handling empty states, and making complex data explainable.
You have practical experience with ML-powered product features, such as personalization, recommendations, or classification systems.
Shared Qualities
Strong software engineering background with 4-7+ years of hands-on development experience in building and shipping production systems or products.
A passion for being on the frontier of AI products.
High agency and a bias to action in a high-autonomy environment.
Degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent professional experience.
Even better...
Deep experience with event streaming platforms (e.g., Kafka, Kinesis) and real-time data processing.
Experience with modern data visualization libraries (e.g., ECharts, D3.js) and the principles of building performant, reusable charting components for complex data.
Production experience with recommender systems or optimization loops (e.g., multi-armed bandits, ranking).
A track record of leading complex technical projects or mentoring other engineers.
What we offer
We want our benefits to reflect our values and offer the following to full-time employees:
Flexible (unlimited) paid time off
Medical, dental, and vision benefits for you and your family
Life insurance and disability benefits
Retirement plan dependent on country of employment
Parental leave
Fertility and family building benefits through Carrot
Lunch, as well as delicious snacks and coffee to keep you energized
Discretionary benefit stipend giving people the ability to spend where it matters most
Free alphorn lessons
These benefits are further detailed in Sierra's policies, may vary by region, and are subject to change at any time, consistent with the terms of any applicable compensation or benefits plans. Eligible full-time employees can participate in Sierra's equity plans subject to the terms of the applicable plans and policies.
About Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is a nonprofit organization that promotes environmental conservation. It was founded in 1892 by John Muir and is one of the oldest and largest environmental organizations in the United States. The organization has over 3.8 million members and supporters and is dedicated to protecting the planet's natural resources and wildlife. The Sierra Club engages in a variety of activities, including lobbying for environmental legislation, organizing outdoor activities, and publishing a magazine. The organization is headquartered in Oakland, California.
