Senior Software Engineer (Backend)

Soda - creators of Soda Core - are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to help improve our Open Source and Cloud products.

We're moving in an exciting new direction, and we need your help. We're looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to help us build the platform that catches data problems before they become business problems. If you’re a backend engineer who thrives on tackling large-scale challenges and wants to build the future of Fully Automated Data Quality, we’d love to hear from you.

Soda’s mission is to monitor the world’s decisions. We’re building the first Data and AI performance monitoring platform that spans data collection to automated decision-making. Soda helps customers find, understand, and fix data quality issues by combining automated post-production monitoring with pre-production pipeline data testing. We enable Data Engineers to effectively own DQ by “shifting left” the data quality initiatives from business to engineering.

Soda was founded in 2019 by Maarten (employee #5 at Collibra, Go-To-Market leadership) and Tom (launched multiple OSS projects generating hundreds of millions in value). Together, they built a tool that ensures data quality across Data Engineering, Data Governance, and business use cases. Our open-source project, Soda Core, is already used by companies like Tesla, Slack, Adyen, Walmart, and JPMC. Soda commercializes its software through the Soda Cloud product. We're well-funded, with investors like Point 9 Capital, Hummingbird, Singular, and Eurazeo.

You'll own significant parts of our backend systems: the APIs, services, and infrastructure that power Soda Cloud. This is a Java-heavy role, but you'll need to be comfortable jumping into Python when working alongside our data engineering stack.

We need someone who can hit the ground running. You've built and scaled backend systems before. You know what good looks like and you're not afraid to make it happen.

• Design and build robust backend services and APIs in Java
• Work across the stack into Python where our data tooling lives
• Improve system reliability, performance, and scalability as our customer base grows
• Collaborate directly with product and frontend teams to ship features that solve real problems
• Participate in architectural decisions - your opinion matters here

• Strong Java experience. Building production backend systems is your home turf: APIs, async processing, concurrency, performance tuning. You've debugged enough memory leaks and thread pools to know what you're doing, and you know there's more to java than just off-the-shelf frameworks
• Solid Python skills - comfortable enough to contribute meaningfully
• Solid SQL skills in the context of backend development - you've worked with ORMs, persistence layers, locking, and schema migrations in production
• Cloud: Hands-on with AWS (or GCP/Azure) - you've deployed and operated services in production
• You understand DevOps concepts (containerization, CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code) and can deploy your own code. You have solid working knowledge of Linux for doing backend and DevOps work.
• Fundamentals: Testing strategies, observability (metrics, logging, tracing), performance profiling
• Independence: You don't need hand-holding in a distributed, async team
• English: Fluent

• Experience with columnar/analytical databases (ClickHouse, DuckDB, or similar)
• Background in data pipelines, streaming systems, or data quality tooling
• Familiarity with modern data stack (dbt, Airflow, Spark, Databricks, ...)
• Multi-tenant SaaS experience at scale

• Compensation: Up to €120,000/year + equity
• Location: Fully remote (EU timezone, Belgian office available)
• Autonomy: Real ownership, real impact, no micromanagement
• Team: Senior engineers who ship, across 12+ countries
  

We value freedom with responsibility, transparency, and a growth mindset. We dislike politics and bullshit and value open and direct communication without judgment. We proactively bring up and address potential issues before they become critical and overcommunicate frequently. Working at Soda, you will have full autonomy to make impactful product and roadmap decisions and prioritize and organize your work how you see fit.

• Be Part of a Transformation: We’re entering a pivotal phase, and your work will define the industry’s future.
• Experience fast growth: Work with a fast-growing international VC-funded startup with a flat structure
• High-Impact Team: Join a senior engineering team that values autonomy, responsibility, and shipping things that matter.
• Ownership from Day One: If you see a bottleneck, you remove it. If you want to try out a new GitOps workflow or optimize Kubernetes scaling, you have the runway.
• International Culture: Our team spans 12+ countries. Learn from different perspectives and collaborate across time zones.
• Work on your own terms: Fully remote, flexible work, with as many opportunities to meet up as you want!
• Open Source at Scale: Contribute directly to Soda Core, used by household names. Shape features that will reach thousands of engineers.

• Rapidly Changing Priorities: In a fast-moving expansion phase, our roadmap can pivot quickly. It's a fast-paced environment with a LOT of work to be done.
• Flexibility Required: You will have to learn new things all the time.