Senior Software Engineer, Data Persistence

Senior Software Engineer, Data Persistence

As a Senior Software Engineer on Data Persistence, you will play a critical role in designing, building, and optimizing the data systems that power our enterprise SaaS platform. You will lead initiatives to enhance the scalability, performance, and availability of our cloud-native, distributed data architecture while ensuring a best-in-class developer experience.

You will collaborate closely with engineering teams to develop efficient, resilient, and high-performance data solutions that support real-world customer workloads. Your expertise in relational databases, distributed storage, and high-availability architectures will help shape the foundation of our data persistence strategy.

This role requires you to be work authorized in the United States without the need for employer sponsorship.

What will you do?

• Guide the evolution of our data persistence architecture to meet best-in-class durability, availability, and recovery objectives.
• Architect and optimize data storage solutions for performance, scalability, and reliability across a multi-tenant, cloud-native infrastructure.
• Enhance and optimize relational databases (PostgreSQL) for query performance, indexing strategies, and schema evolution.
• Design and implement data partitioning, caching, and indexing strategies to support high-throughput, low-latency applications.
• Drive RPO/RTO improvements, ensuring high availability, failover, and disaster recovery plans are in place.
• Develop efficient data access patterns and work closely with application teams to improve performance at the application layer.
• Optimize analytics workloads, including views, materialized views, and columnar storage.
• Improve observability by investing in database monitoring, automation, and performance telemetry.
• Seek cost optimizations in database infrastructure, balancing performance and efficiency.
• Mentor engineers and contribute to a collaborative culture of technical excellence.

Desired Skills and Experience

• 5+ years of experience in software or infrastructure engineering, with a strong background in data persistence, distributed systems, or database engineering.
• Solid expertise in relational databases, particularly PostgreSQL (or similar), including query optimization, indexing, and schema design.
• Experience with NoSQL, in-memory databases, and search indexes (e.g., Redis, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch).
• Strong grasp of high availability, disaster recovery, and failover strategies (RPO/RTO).
• Experience with AWS cloud-native architectures, including services like Aurora RDS, S3, Route53, and Lambda.
• Proficiency in at least one programming language (Java,Kotlin, Python, TypeScript). 
• Understanding of observability tools (DataDog), database monitoring, and performance telemetry.
• Ability to balance short-term deliverables with a long-term architectural vision.
• Excellent communication and problem-solving skills.
• A strong desire to work in a collaborative, learning-focused, and fun environment.

Nice to Have

• Experience with columnar stores and big data processing frameworks.
• Background in event-driven architectures (Kafka, Pub/Sub).
• Hands-on experience with data warehousing solutions (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift).
• Familiarity with Kubernetes and microservices-based architectures.

About Ridgeline

Ridgeline is the industry cloud platform for investment management. It was founded in 2017 by visionary entrepreneur Dave Duffield (co-founder of both PeopleSoft and Workday) to address the unique technology challenges of an industry in need of new thinking. We are building a modern platform in the public cloud, purpose-built for the investment management industry to empower business like never before. 

Headquartered in Lake Tahoe with offices in Reno, Manhattan, and the Bay Area, Ridgeline is proud to have built a fast-growing, people-first company that has been recognized by Fast Company as a “Best Workplace for Innovators,” by LinkedIn as a “Top U.S. Startup,” and by The Software Report as a “Top 100 Software Company.”

Ridgeline is proud to be a community-minded, discrimination-free equal opportunity workplace.

Ridgeline processes the information you submit in connection with your application in accordance with the Ridgeline Applicant Privacy Statement. Please review the Ridgeline Applicant Privacy Statement in full to understand our privacy practices and contact us with any questions.

Compensation and Benefits 

The typical starting salary range for new hires in this role is targeted at $145,000-$180,000. Final compensation amounts are determined by multiple factors, including candidate experience and expertise, and may vary from the amount listed above. 

As an employee at Ridgeline, you’ll have many opportunities for advancement in your career and can make a true impact on the product. 

In addition to the base salary, 100% of Ridgeline employees can participate in our Company Stock Plan subject to the applicable Stock Option Agreement. We also offer rich benefits that reflect the kind of organization we want to be: one in which our employees feel valued and are inspired to bring their best selves to work. These include unlimited vacation, educational and wellness reimbursements, and $0 cost employee insurance plans. Please check out our Careers page for a more comprehensive overview of our perks and benefits.