Staff Software Engineer, Product Data Platform

Engineering at Brex

Engineering at Brex is about building systems that scale with speed and intention. Our teams span Software, Data, Security, and IT, and operate with high autonomy and deep collaboration. We tackle hard technical problems, own our outcomes, and push for excellence at every level — from architecture to deployment. It’s an environment where engineering is a craft, and builders become leaders.

Where you’ll work

This role will be based in our San Francisco Office. We are a hybrid environment that combines the energy and connections of being in the office with the benefits and flexibility of working from home. We currently require a minimum of three coordinated days in the office per week, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday.

As a perk, we also have up to four weeks per year of fully remote work!

What you’ll do

This opportunity is on our Product Data Platform (PDP) team, which builds and operates the high-performance data, query, and search infrastructure that powers critical Brex product experiences. PDP’s mission is to make Brex customizable, scalable, and reliable for finance teams, and that requires deeply optimized, production-grade backend systems.

As a Senior Software Engineer, you’ll work on data-intensive, distributed systems at scale. You’ll lead architectural and performance improvements across the platform, driving better latency, correctness, and scalability across multiple product surfaces. PDP also builds AI-powered data products, including an agentic reporting experience that enables customers to interact with their financial data in dynamic, intelligent ways. Your work ensures these systems are fast, reliable, and built to scale.

Responsibilities:

• Analyze and optimize complex query plans, execution paths, cost models, joins, and indexing strategies.
• Drive schema and access-pattern improvements to resolve systemic performance bottlenecks.
• Debug and remediate P95/P99 latency issues under load in production systems.
• Design and operate distributed systems with thoughtful tradeoffs around consistency, latency, caching, and failure modes.
• Evaluate existing architectures to proactively identify scaling risks and long-term reliability gaps.
• Implement and improve caching strategies, read/write separation, and replica usage.
• Contribute to and improve backend systems primarily in the JVM ecosystem (Kotlin/Java).
• Raise the technical bar through thoughtful design reviews and clear communication of tradeoffs.

Requirements:

• 7+ years of backend engineering experience building and operating production systems at scale.
• Experience building platforms or infrastructure used by real customers.
• Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate cross-functionally.
• Deep hands-on experience with relational databases (Postgres or Aurora strongly preferred)
• Strong expertise in query plan design and analysis, indexing strategies, and real-world database optimization.

Bonus:

• Hands-on experience with OpenSearch / Elasticsearch or similar systems in production
• Experience with multi-tenant or data-heavy platforms.

Compensation:

• The expected salary range for this role is $192,000 - $240,000 + equity. However, the starting base pay will depend on a number of factors including the candidate’s location, skills, experience, market demands, and internal pay parity.