At Sift, we’re redefining how modern machines are built, tested, and operated. Our platform gives engineers real-time observability over high-frequency telemetry—eliminating bottlenecks and enabling faster, more reliable development.
Sift was born from our work at SpaceX on Dragon, Falcon, Starlink, and Starship—where scaling telemetry, debugging flight systems, and ensuring mission reliability demanded new infrastructure. Founded by a team from SpaceX, Google, and Palantir, Sift is built for mission-critical systems where precision and scalability are non-negotiable.
As an early engineer at Sift, you won’t just write code—you’ll help define the architecture, shape the product, and influence the culture of a company focused on solving real engineering problems. If you’re looking for complex technical challenges and the opportunity to build foundational systems supporting complex machines from the ground up, we want to hear from you.
In This Role, You'll:
Design, build, and maintain scalable, resilient infrastructure solutions to support our growing platform and customer base.
Collaborate with software engineers to optimize application performance and reliability.
Implement monitoring, alerting, and logging systems to ensure proactive identification and resolution of issues.
Automate deployment processes and streamline infrastructure management using modern DevOps tools and methodologies.
Evolve our backend architecture/infrastructure for both cloud and on-premise deployments.
Work with the team to set and prioritize our roadmap to maximize customer impact.
Lead initiatives to improve infrastructure reliability, performance, and cost efficiency.
The Skillset You'll Bring:
3+ years of relevant distributed systems experience focusing on designing and managing cloud-based environments (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP).
Hands-on experience with containerization technologies (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes) and container orchestration platforms.
Passion for building and operating developer productivity tools, frameworks, and other aspects of platform engineering.
Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and version control systems.
Knowledge of automated testing best practices and frameworks, ensuring software reliability through integration, performance, and end-to-end testing in distributed systems.
You're excited by the ambiguity and high-ownership culture of early-stage startups.
You are pragmatic, solution-oriented, and scrappy.
You enjoy working collaboratively with a broad range of job functions and roles.
Experience with our tech stack: Go, Java, React, TypeScript, Kafka/Redpanda, Flink, AWS, Azure, GCP, Docker, Kubernetes, and Terraform/CDK
Or equivalent distributed systems
Good knowledge of cloud, on-prem, networking, and service architecture in multi-region multi-cloud setups.
Engineering At Sift:
You'll have the opportunity to help evolve and scale our platform because we're still in the early stages of building the product. Relevant technologies include:
Web frontend & backend: ECharts, Go, gRPC, PostgreSQL, Protobuf, Radix, React, Redux, and TypeScript
Data: Arrow, DataFusion, Flink, Parquet, and Rust
Infrastructure: Argo CD, AWS, Docker, GitHub Actions, Grafana, Kubernetes, Kustomize, Linux, Prometheus, and Terragrunt
Location:
Sift’s headquarters is in El Segundo, CA. We collaborate in person twice a week—on Mondays and Thursdays—and come together for a full week every two months. While we prefer team members to be local, we’re open to relocating candidates to LA or considering remote work from the San Francisco area for the right candidate.
Salary range: $150,000 - $200,000 per year. Plus equity and benefits.
Eligibility:
US Person Required: Must be a U.S. Citizen or Green Card Holder due to ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) / EAR (Export Administration Regulations) compliance requirements.
Top Skills
What We Do
Sift is transforming how modern machines are built and operated. Our platform goes beyond traditional monitoring, enabling automated data review that catches unusual conditions in systems too complex for manual checks. This not only enhances reliability but also dramatically speeds up development cycles.
At our core, we provide a unified solution for ingesting, storing, and analyzing vast amounts of machine data. By combining powerful data processing with easy-to-use visualizations, we help engineers make sense of enormous amounts of information. From spacecraft to self-driving cars, Sift is the backbone of innovation for companies pushing technology to new limits.
Born from the challenges of spaceflight, Sift aims to accelerate technological progress. We believe that by giving engineers better tools to understand and improve their creations, we can unlock a new era of innovation. Our mission goes beyond solving today's engineering problems; we're building the foundation for a future where the most ambitious machines are developed with confidence, run with precision, and constantly improved.
We're also tackling related challenges like simplifying regulatory compliance, and improving manufacturing processes. By connecting data from various sources—from sensors to manufacturing records to regulatory requirements—we're empowering a new generation of engineers to build the technologies that will shape our world.
Join us in our journey to usher in this new age of reliable, groundbreaking technology. Whether you're launching rockets, developing autonomous systems, or advancing energy and transportation, Sift is your partner in turning vast amounts of data into insights that drive innovation forward.
