Senior Platform Engineer (Distributed Data Stores)

This is Adyen

Adyen provides payments, data, and financial products in a single solution for customers like Meta, Uber, H&M, and Microsoft - making us the financial technology platform of choice. At Adyen, everything we do is engineered for ambition. 

For our teams, we create an environment with opportunities for our people to succeed, backed by the culture and support to ensure they are enabled to truly own their careers. We are motivated individuals who tackle unique technical challenges at scale and solve them as a team. Together, we deliver innovative and ethical solutions that help businesses achieve their ambitions faster.
Senior Platform Engineer

We are on the lookout for a Senior Platform Engineer to join our Platform Engineering organization. Our teams in this area are responsible for provisioning, running, and managing critical data systems like PostgreSQL, Apache Cassandra, Apache Kafka, and CockroachDB for all product teams, at massive scale. In this role you will primarily focus on one of these areas (SQL Databases Platform) or foundational components that span multiple areas. 

As a Platform Engineer your work will directly influence the resilience, performance, and developer experience of Adyen's core platform. A platform that was responsible for processing over a trillion euros worth of payments in 2024.

This role is for a versatile engineer that has a balance of software engineering and infrastructure experience who is eager to deep dive into complex distributed systems and solve real world problems that have impact at a global scale. You will work closely with other platform teams (e.g. Databases, Containers, Networking and Storage) and product teams within Adyen to scale our data store offerings. You'll be joining a team that values user centric design, technical excellence, automation, continuous learning, and a proactive approach to system reliability and performance.

What you'll do:

• Design and implement: Build, maintain, and evolve the infrastructure and tooling that supports our core data platforms.
• System reliability: Ensure the high availability, performance, and scalability of our critical data systems.
• Troubleshoot and optimize: Deep dive into performance bottlenecks, identify root causes, and implement effective solutions. This includes analyzing system metrics, core dumps, traces, and logs.
• Automation: Develop and maintain tooling to streamline operational tasks and improve efficiency.
• Code and debug: Write high-quality, maintainable code in languages such as Go or Python to solve complex engineering problems and debug existing systems.
• Collaboration: Work closely with other engineering teams to provide expert guidance and support for their data platform needs. 
• On-Call: Participate in an on-call rotation to support the reliability of our production systems.

Who you are:

• Systems engineering: Solid experience in systems engineering principles, including distributed systems, consensus based systems, high availability, and disaster recovery.
• Coding proficiency: Strong programming skills in at least one of the following languages: Go or Python. You're comfortable writing clean, efficient and testable code, and adept at debugging complex applications.
• Linux expert: You possess a deep understanding of Linux operating systems, including networking, storage, and performance tuning.
• Kubernetes savvy: Hands-on experience with Kubernetes, including deploying, managing, and troubleshooting applications within a Kubernetes environment.
• Problem solver: You have a proven track record of deep diving into complex technical issues, identifying root causes and implementing robust solutions.
• Curious : You're eager to learn new technologies and bring them to the team/company where it makes sense, dive deeper into complex systems and continuously improve your skills.
• Team Player: Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with a willingness to share knowledge and contribute to a positive team environment.

Bonus points for:

• Experience with running or managing an Apache Cassandra platform offering
• Experience with other database technologies or distributed systems
• Experience with Puppet, Ansible, Terraform and/or Vault.
• Familiarity with observability tools (e.g. Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack).
• Experience in a fast-paced, high-growth environment

Challenges you'll tackle:

The main technical challenge includes managing the complexity of large-scale stateful database systems at global scale, where ensuring high availability, performance, and disaster recovery is top of mind. You will have to navigate high-stakes operations (e.g., processing millions of queries per second) which can lead to issues like performance bottlenecks or failures in real-time. You will be expected to prevent issues, perform root-cause analysis from metrics/logs, and do troubleshooting. Additionally, balancing deep dives into technical problems with collaboration across teams, participating in on-call rotations, and continuously evolving infrastructure through automation and code in Go or Python.

Some of our most recent projects within this team include

• Some of our most recent projects within this team include
• Building a custom k8s ingress controller using Ciliium
• Scale out Cassandra from 50 nodes to 400
• Built a global streaming platform on top of open source Kafka, Mirrormaker

Our team structure

This role will be hired as part of our NoSQL Database team, part of the Persistent Datastores group within the Platform Engineering department. The NoSQL Database team delivers and supports high quality NoSQL database experiences to our developers in order to meet our merchants expectations of reliable and accessible data. The main database they support is Cassandra. Other smaller deployments include Redis and Elasticsearch. These datastores all run on Kubernetes clusters that we maintain and operate on bare metal systems.

Our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion commitments 

Our unique approach is a product of our diverse perspectives. This diversity of backgrounds and cultures is essential in helping us maintain our momentum. Our business and technical challenges are unique, and we need as many different voices as possible to join us in solving them - voices like yours. No matter who you are or where you’re from, we welcome you to be your true self at Adyen. 

Studies show that women and members of underrepresented communities apply for jobs only if they meet 100% of the qualifications. Does this sound like you? If so, Adyen encourages you to reconsider and apply. We look forward to your application!

What’s next?

Ensuring a smooth and enjoyable candidate experience is critical for us. We aim to get back to you regarding your application within 5 business days. Our interview process tends to take about 4 weeks to complete, but may fluctuate depending on the role. Learn more about our hiring process here. Don’t be afraid to let us know if you need more flexibility.

This role is based out our Amsterdam office. We are an office-first company and value in-person collaboration; we do not offer remote-only roles.