Senior Software Engineer (C / Linux Systems)
San Jose, CA | Hybrid (in office Tuesday–Thursday)
About Index Engines
At Index Engines, we're all about helping companies bounce back from cyber threats and trust their data again, no matter what hits them.
Our flagship solution, CyberSense, delivers 99.99% accuracy in detecting data corruption, helping organizations recover quickly from ransomware attacks. We partner with awesome industry leaders like Dell Technologies, IBM, Lenovo/Infinidat, and Hitachi Vantara to power AI-driven cyber recovery across both primary and backup storage.
We're a growing, tech-forward company with a startup feel and an enterprise-level impact. We take our mission seriously, but not ourselves. Expect a team that's collaborative, curious, and loves solving hard problems together.
The Role
We're looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join our San Jose team and help build and evolve the core of our Linux-based product. Most of your work will be in C, close to the operating system and storage layers. That means performance, memory and concurrency matter every day.
You'll own significant parts of the codebase, shape technical direction, and mentor other engineers. When a hard problem reaches a customer, you'll work with our Support team to find the root cause and fix it for good.
What You'll Do
- Design, build and maintain high-performance, multithreaded C code for our Linux product.
- Own features end to end, from design and implementation through testing, release and support.
- Lead design reviews and help shape architecture for scalability, reliability and security.
- Profile and optimize CPU, memory and I/O performance across large-scale data processing workloads.
- Diagnose complex production issues, including crashes, memory corruption, race conditions and performance regressions, using tools such as gdb, Valgrind and perf.
- Work with Support to troubleshoot and resolve escalated customer issues.
- Build integrations with storage and backup platforms, including file systems, storage protocols and partner APIs.
- Write clean, well-tested code and set the standard for code quality through thoughtful code reviews.
- Mentor junior and mid-level engineers and share knowledge across the team.
- Collaborate with Product, QA, DevOps and Security to deliver reliable releases, and strengthen our CI/CD and testing practices.
What You Bring
- 4-7 years of professional software engineering experience, with most of it writing production C.
- Expert-level C on Linux, including memory management, pointers, multithreading and synchronization, and inter-process communication.
- Strong understanding of Linux internals: processes, file systems, I/O, networking and system calls.
- Proven skill debugging and profiling native code with gdb, Valgrind, perf, core dump analysis or similar tools.
- Experience with storage, backup, file systems or high-availability/clustered systems.
- Strong grasp of data structures, algorithms and systems design.
- Working knowledge of Python for scripting, tooling and test automation.
- A track record of technical leadership: leading designs, owning major components and mentoring engineers.
- Strong problem-solving and communication skills, including explaining complex issues to non-engineers.
- A bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or a related field.
We'd Love It If You Have
- Experience with storage protocols and technologies such as SCSI, NFS, SMB/CIFS or VMFS.
- Familiarity with backup technologies, snapshots and data protection platforms.
- Experience with C++ or kernel-level development.
- Experience building RESTful APIs or backend services.
- Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure or GCP) and containers.
- Linux system administration experience, and knowledge of server hardware and networking.
- Experience with Git, Jira and Confluence.
- Comfort using AI tools such as Claude or ChatGPT to speed up development and debugging.
- A master's degree in Computer Science or a related field.
Why You'll Love Working Here
At Index Engines, you'll join a team that's equal parts smart, supportive, and a little nerdy (in the best way possible). We move fast, collaborate often, and celebrate wins big and small. You'll have the freedom to experiment, make decisions, and actually see the impact of your work. We're proud of what we build, and we like having fun while we do it.
If you're looking for a place where you can lead with vision, grow with purpose, and work with people who genuinely enjoy what they do, you'll fit right in.
- Comprehensive health, dental, and vision benefits
- 401(k)
- Unlimited PTO
- Opportunities for professional development and certification support
- Collaborative team environment with a mission-driven culture
- Named top New Jersey Workplace by NJ Advanced Media for 3 consecutive years, including 2025
- Hybrid schedule: work from home Mondays and Fridays, in our San Jose office Tuesday through Thursday