Senior Software Engineer

We’re a global team of over 400 people, working together to push the boundaries of open-source technology and multi-cloud solutions. Our vision is to help developers, builders, and creators bring their ideas to life with speed and simplicity, by providing a cloud data platform that makes open-source databases, search, streaming, and application infrastructure easily accessible to everyone. The Role: The team’s mission is to build the definitive AI-Native Open Source Data Platform. They are integrating best-of-breed open-source technologies - starting with data governance and discovery (DataHub) and moving into unified federated querying - to deliver a seamless data experience in minutes, not months. They aren’t a typical corporate team. They operate like an early-stage startup inside Aiven: they move fast, iterate rapidly, and default to extreme ownership. Senior Software Engineers don’t just own a product surface from ideation to production - they shape how the team builds, help resolve the hardest technical problems, and raise the bar for everyone around them. The AI-First Mindset They aren’t just building for an AI-first future; they live in it. They expect candidates to be AI-First Engineers. This means actively using LLMs and agentic workflows to supercharge daily coding, automate mundane tasks, and optimize deployment pipelines. Senior engineers are also expected to bring this mindset to the team - identifying where AI-driven workflows can multiply the team’s output and helping others adopt them. What You’ll Do: Own the Stack (Backend to Console): Act as a true full-stack engineer across backend services written in Python and the user-facing web flows within the React-based Aiven Console, taking on the most architecturally significant and ambiguous parts of the system. Drive Technical Direction: Work on complex, open-ended problems where the right approach isn’t obvious - evaluate variable factors, choose methods and techniques, and define the patterns and standards the rest of the team builds on. Launch & Maintain Managed OSS Products: Lead the technical design and delivery of new managed services like DataHub on Aiven, and help build out the context layer offering as it matures. Mentor and Raise the Bar: Review designs and code, advise other engineers on complex technical matters, and help less experienced team members grow. Contribute Back to the Community: Give back to the ecosystem by upstreaming bug fixes, optimizations, and feature enhancements to original open-source projects whenever possible. Build AI-First Workflows: Design and productionize AI context workflows, including synthetic metadata generation, reducing hallucinations, and automated data discovery workflows. Construct the Aiven Context Layer: Create integrations, features, and workflows that turn fragmented technologies into a seamless platform experience. Partner Beyond the Team: Network with contacts outside the immediate team - product, design, other engineering groups - and adapt how you communicate technical tradeoffs to a broader business audience. What You’ll Bring: Senior software engineering experience, with a track record of resolving complex problems that require in-depth evaluation of variable factors and ambiguous requirements. Diverse Programming Skills: Deep proficiency in Python, with the judgment to select, adapt, and evaluate techniques for new or unfamiliar problems (Java, etc. as needed). Frontend Capabilities: Solid experience with React and TypeScript, plus enough product intuition to make UI decisions that hold up without close direction. Sound Technical Judgment: Comfortable determining your own methods and procedures on new assignments, with work reviewed on completion rather than step by step. An AI-First Workflow: You\u2019ve already integrated AI tools deeply into your development process, and you look for automation opportunities for yourself and your team. A Startup Soul: You thrive in ambiguous environments, don\u2019t wait for permission or perfect documentation, and are comfortable being the person who figures things out first. Data Systems Literacy: Familiarity with the foundational building blocks of modern data stacks (e.g., PostgreSQL, OpenSearch, Kafka). Nice to Have: Prior experience as an early startup hire. Active contributions to open-source software (OSS) projects. Background or strong interest in agentic context, data catalogs, or ontologies. Experience building or experimenting with Agentic workflows, Text-to-SQL, or Graph RAG. Experience mentoring engineers or leading technical initiatives that span multiple engineers or teams.