The Role
The Staff Platform Engineer will optimize database performance, ensure system resilience, design caching strategies, and manage infrastructure automation while collaborating with product teams to enhance platform reliability.
Summary Generated by Built In
About Quizlet:
At Quizlet, our mission is to help every learner achieve their outcomes in the most effective and delightful way. Our $1B+ learning platform serves tens of millions of students every month, including two-thirds of U.S. high schoolers and half of U.S. college students, powering over 2 billion learning interactions monthly.
We blend cognitive science with machine learning to personalize and enhance the learning experience for students, professionals, and lifelong learners alike. We’re energized by the potential to power more learners through multiple approaches and various tools.
Let’s Build the Future of Learning
Join us to design and deliver AI-powered learning tools that scale across the world and unlock human potential.
About the Role:
We’re hiring a Staff Platform Engineer – Database Systems to be a core member of our Platform Engineering team. You’ll contribute across the full infrastructure stack while bringing deep expertise in database systems, performance optimization, and data reliability. This role reports to the Senior Director of Technical Infrastructure.
We’re happy to share that this is an onsite position in our San Francisco office. To help foster team collaboration, we require that employees be in the office a minimum of three days per week: Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday and as needed by your manager or the company. We believe that this working environment facilitates increased work efficiency, team partnership, and supports growth as an employee and organization.
In this role, you will:
- Platform Reliability & System Resilience: Develop, test, and implement infrastructure automation and tooling to maintain 99.95% availability under peak load. Build self-healing capabilities, optimize resource utilization across Kubernetes clusters (GKE), and contribute to platform-wide resilience initiatives
- Database Performance & Operations: Serve as the team’s database expert, diagnosing and resolving performance issues across Cloud Spanner, PlanetScale MySQL, and BigQuery. Conduct query analysis, implement indexing strategies, and optimize connection pooling to maintain sub-100ms p99 latency
- Caching & Data Access Layer: Design and implement caching strategies using Memorystore (Redis/Memcached). Build high-volume connection management systems (in Go or Python) that efficiently handle database and cache access patterns under sustained load
- Infrastructure as Code & Automation: Manage platform infrastructure using Terraform and Kubernetes. Build automation that improves developer velocity, reduces MTTR, and enables safe, self-service infrastructure operations
- Observability & Operational Excellence: Design and deploy instrumentation within Datadog for monitoring databases, caches, and platform services. Use post-incident analyses (e.g., Jeli) to reduce operational toil and improve service reliability
- Architectural Consulting & Standards: Partner with Product Engineering teams to review designs, define SLOs, optimize data access patterns, and ensure new services are resilient and operable before production deployment
What you bring to the table:
- Strong software engineering foundation — you write production-quality code, design scalable systems, and can reason about distributed systems tradeoffs
- 5–8 years of hands-on database engineering experience in production environments handling significant scale (thousands of RPS or more).
- Deep MySQL expertise (replication, sharding, query optimization, connection management); PlanetScale experience a plus
- Multi-database proficiency with Cloud Spanner, Postgres, and/or BigQuery
- Production experience with in-memory caches (Redis, Memcached, or Valkey)
- Kubernetes (GKE preferred) and Terraform experience for infrastructure as code
- Strong coding skills in Python or Go for automation, tooling, and platform services
- Hands-on experience with GCP database services (Cloud Spanner, Cloud SQL, Memorystore, BigQuery) and monitoring platforms like Datadog
- Strong understanding of backup/recovery, HA patterns, and incident response
Bonus points if you have:
- Experience with Vitess or PlanetScale MySQL
- Knowledge of Istio service mesh and database connection management patterns
- Experience with data streaming platforms (Kafka, Pub/Sub)
Compensation, Benefits & Perks
- Quizlet is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Salary transparency helps to mitigate unfair hiring practices when it comes to discrimination and pay gaps. Total compensation for this role is market competitive, including a starting base salary of $196,320 – $268,100, depending on location and experience, as well as company stock options
- Collaborate with your manager and team to create a healthy work-life balance
- 20 vacation days that we expect you to take!
- Competitive health, dental, and vision insurance (100% employee and 75% dependent PPO, Dental, VSP Choice)
- Employer-sponsored 401(k) plan with company match
- Access to LinkedIn Learning and other resources to support professional growth
- Paid Family Leave, FSA, HSA, Commuter benefits, and Wellness benefits
- 40 hours of annual paid time off to participate in volunteer programs of choice
Why Join Quizlet?
🌎 Massive reach: 60M+ users, 1B+ interactions per week
🧠 Cutting-edge tech: Generative AI, adaptive learning, cognitive science
📈 Strong momentum: Top-tier investors, sustainable business, real traction
🎯 Mission-first: Work that makes a difference in people’s lives
🤝 Inclusive culture: Committed to equity, diversity, and belonging
We strive to make everyone feel comfortable and welcome!
We work to create a holistic interview process, where both Quizlet and candidates have an opportunity to view what it would be like to work together, in exploring a mutually beneficial partnership.
We provide a transparent setting that gives a comprehensive view of who we are!
In Closing:
At Quizlet, we’re excited about passionate people joining our team—even if you don’t check every box on the requirements list. We value unique perspectives and believe everyone has something meaningful to contribute. Our culture is all about taking initiative, learning through challenges, and striving for high-quality work while staying curious and open to new ideas. We believe in honest, respectful communication, thoughtful collaboration, and creating a supportive space where everyone can grow and succeed together.”
Quizlet’s success as an online learning community depends on a strong commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
As an equal opportunity employer and a tech company committed to societal change, we welcome applicants from all backgrounds. Women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, individuals with disabilities, and veterans are strongly encouraged to apply. Come join us!
To All Recruiters and Placement Agencies:
At this time, Quizlet does not accept unsolicited agency resumes and/or profiles.
Please do not forward unsolicited agency resumes to our website or to any Quizlet employee. Quizlet will not pay fees to any third-party agency or firm nor will it be responsible for any agency fees associated with unsolicited resumes. All unsolicited resumes received will be considered the property of Quizlet.
#LI-FT
Top Skills
BigQuery
Cloud Spanner
Datadog
Go
Kubernetes
Memcached
MySQL
Planetscale Mysql
Python
Redis
Terraform
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The Company
What We Do
Quizlet is a leading consumer learning brand that builds learning tools to inspire and empower students and teachers. Our team is already supporting a user base of over 60 million active users a month. We're also among the top 20 U.S. websites and top education apps for iOS and Android - and it's only the beginning. We’re a fast-growing Series C startup, valued at $1 Billion and backed by Union Square Ventures, Costanoa Venture Capital, Icon Ventures, Owl Ventures, Altos Ventures and General Atlantic.
With our massive reach and focus on delivering high-quality innovative learning tools, we're having a major global impact on education.
