Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Platform)
Hex — US Timezones
Posted 2026-07-08
We are looking for a Staff or Principal-level software engineer to join our Compute team.
Hex's Compute team owns one of the hardest performance problems in the product: our users do everything from analyzing 100-line CSV files to querying petabyte-scale Snowflake tables, and in all cases they expect it to feel fast. We power a technical product that our customers trust to accurately retrieve data from their own systems to then efficiently execute polyglot backed analytics workflows.
This is a backend-heavy role with a focus on computation, performance, data systems design, and systems architecture. You'll drive architectural decisions that compound over years, write the technical designs that shape how the team builds, and directly influence the long-term trajectory of Hex's compute platform — all while staying deeply hands-on in the codebase.
What you will do:
- Evolve Hex's execution architecture — the graph-based system that compiles, plans, and runs user notebooks — including proposing and building entirely new compute components that support faster, smarter execution
- Drive parallel execution strategies and caching approaches that reduce latency and minimize unnecessa