Senior Software Engineer (Java/C++) — Data Catalog and Ingestion

About Our Client:
Our client is a leading enterprise data platform company building an open, high-performance data lakehouse for AI and analytical workloads. The platform combines an intelligent SQL query engine, an AI-ready semantic layer, and an open catalog built on Apache Iceberg — enabling Fortune 500 companies across finance, energy, manufacturing, and logistics to unify, query, and govern data at massive scale across cloud and on-premise sources.

About the Role:
We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer for the data catalog and enterprise data management layer of a large-scale lakehouse platform — the services that automate data ingestion and autonomously optimize Apache Iceberg tables. You will own features through the full development cycle, from design through deployment, in a multithreaded, distributed environment where scalability, performance, and always-on availability are the baseline expectations.
This is a systems-level, backend engineering role focused on data infrastructure internals — not application development or CRUD services.

Responsibilities:
Own the full software development cycle — inception, design, development, testing, deployment — for catalog and data-management services
Build and operate services for automated ingestion and autonomous optimization of Apache Iceberg tables
Reason about concurrency and parallelization to deliver scalability and performance in multithreaded, distributed systems
Drive performance tuning and system-efficiency improvements
Work with Apache Foundation open-source projects, contributing upstream where agreed
Participate in code and design reviews, upholding a high engineering bar
Collaborate with product managers, support teams, and solution architects on feature requests and design updates
Partner with US-based engineering leads on technical decisions.

Required Qualifications:
B.S., M.S., or PhD in Computer Science or a related field
5+ years of software engineering experience, preferably focused on database systems or related fields
Strong object-oriented programming skills in Java or C++
Solid grounding in data structures and algorithms
Hands-on experience with multithreaded and asynchronous programming patterns for scalable, performant systems
A passion for engineering quality — zero-downtime upgrades, availability, resiliency, and uptime as first-class concerns
Comfort with a fast-moving environment; strong ownership; the confidence to defend a technical position and the openness to be mentored
Comfortable with AI-assisted development workflows — using modern AI tools productively while critically validating their output
English Upper-Intermediate or higher (B2+) — daily written and verbal communication with a US-based engineering team
Availability to work EU business hours shifted 2–3 hours later for daily overlap with US West Coast mornings.

Desired Skills:
Database internals and query planning
Distributed systems: concurrency control, data replication, storage systems
Apache Iceberg or other open table formats (Delta Lake, Hudi)
Messaging systems: Kafka, NATS, or cloud pub/sub services
Contributions to open-source data infrastructure (Apache projects especially valued).

Details:
Engagement: Long-term contract
Location: Europe (EU / EEA / UK), remote
Working hours: EU business hours, shifted 2–3 hours later for daily overlap with the US West Coast team