The Role
Design and build data pipelines, storage systems, and backend services for flaky test detection and CI analytics. Lead a team of engineers in solving complex systems challenges and engage directly with customers to develop robust solutions.
Summary Generated by Built In
At Trunk, our mission is to help teams create high-quality software quickly. We've helped engineerings teams at: Google X, Zillow, and Brex to understand why their builds fail, which tests are flaky, and how to ship code faster without sacrificing reliability. AI has made writing code 10x faster, but shipping is still painfully slow. The bottleneck has shifted downstream - to merge conflicts, flaky tests, inconsistent code quality, and dozens of other frictions that drain productivity and morale. Engineering teams that can stay focused on designing, implementing, and delivering software will build magical, high-quality projects - and they'll be happier doing it. We're building a CI Reliability Platform that empowers teams to land code faster and develop happier.
Our founders launched Trunk in 2021 after designing, delivering, and scaling software at Uber, Google, YouTube, and Microsoft. We raised a $25M Series A led by Initialized Capital (Garry Tan) and a16z (Peter Levine), with investments from Haystack Ventures, Garage VC, and the founders of GitHub (Tom Preston-Werner), Apollo GraphQL (Geoff Schmidt), Algolia (Nicolas Dessaigne), and Peopl.ai (Oleg Rogynsky).
CI pipelines are black boxes. Engineers waste hours debugging failures that turn out to be flaky tests or infrastructure noise. Trunk makes this visible: what failed, why, and whether it's worth fixing.
The next wave is agentic. AI tools today hit a wall when code leaves the local environment. We're building the data layer that lets AI agents actually reason about CI: diagnosing failures, suggesting fixes, and eventually shipping code autonomously.
We're looking for a Tech Lead to own the data platform that powers Trunk's flaky test detection and CI analytics products. You'll design and build the systems that ingest millions of test runs per hour, surface actionable insights, and lay the foundation for AI-driven CI workflows.
We're at an inflection point. The scale challenges are real and growing. The AI/agentic future of development tooling is taking shape, and we're building the data infrastructure that makes it possible. If you want to work on hard systems problems with direct customer impact, this is the role.
What you'll do 🧑💻
- Design and build the data pipelines, storage systems, and backend services that power Trunk's flaky test and CI products
- Lead a team of engineers through complex distributed systems and data infrastructure challenges
- Work directly with customers to understand their pain points and translate them into robust technical solutions
- Drive architectural decisions for scale, reliability, and future AI/agentic integrations (MCP, semantic failure clustering, automated remediation)
- Ship independently with high autonomy. We're a small team solving hard problems, and you'll have significant ownership
We're looking for 🔎
- 7+ years of backend/infrastructure engineering experience, with a focus on data processing pipelines and distributed systems
- Experience leading teams of 2+ engineers on complex technical projects
- Track record of building and operating systems at scale
- Strong proficiency in Rust and Python; familiarity with TypeScript
- Experience with our stack: PostgreSQL, ClickHouse, AWS, Kubernetes, Dagster
- Comfort with monitoring, observability, and debugging in distributed environments
- Previous experience at a high-growth startup
You're a good fit if ℹ️
- You're passionate about building high-quality, scalable systems and take pride in clean, maintainable code
- You have deep experience with distributed systems, databases, and performance optimization
- You're comfortable navigating large codebases and can ramp quickly on complex systems
- You enjoy mentoring engineers and thrive in collaborative environments
- Experience and intuition to zero in on root causes for bugs that can leave others stumped
- You're self-directed, making sound technical decisions without waiting for detailed specs
Our tech stack 💻
- Frontend: Typescript, React, Next.js, AWS
- Backend: Typescript, Node, AWS
- Data pipelines: Dagster, python, polars
- CI/CD: GitHub Actions
What we offer 🎁
- Unlimited PTO
- Competitive salary and equity
- Work-life balance
- Lunch ordered in on us at the office on Wednesdays and Thursdays
- Few meetings, so you can ship fast and focus on building
- One Medical membership on us!
- Top-notch medical, dental, vision, short-term disability, long-term disability, and life insurance
- All insurance is 100% company-paid ($0 premiums) for employees and highly subsidized for dependents
- FSA, HSA with company contributions, and pre-tax commuter benefits
- 401(k) plan
- Paid parental leave ( up to 12 weeks)
The salary and equity range for this role are: $200-$245K and .3-.5%.
Please note that the compensation range provided is a general guideline only and is subject to change based on location, qualifications, and experience.
Don’t meet every single requirement? At Trunk, we are dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.
If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, we're happy to help accommodate. Please contact us at [email protected].
Top Skills
AWS
Clickhouse
Dagster
Kubernetes
Postgres
Python
Rust
Typescript
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The Company
What We Do
Trunk is a dev tools startup, redefining software development at scale. We aim to flatten the lost productivity curve that software projects suffer as they grow in scale and complexity. When a majority of your engineer's time is not spent on actual engineering, when the tax paid to land a new Pull Request is greater than the time to write the code - it's time for a new approach
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