Back to jobs

Senior Software Engineer, Distributed Systems

San Francisco, US (Remote)

About Mixpanel

Mixpanel is an event analytics platform for builders who need answers from their data at their fingertips—no SQL required. When everyone in the organization can see and learn from the impact of their work on product, marketing, and company revenue metrics, they are poised to make better decisions.

Over 9,000 paid customers, including companies like Netflix, Pinterest, Sweetgreen, and Samsara, use Mixpanel to understand their customers and measure progress. Our commitment is to provide the most comprehensive and reliable analytics platform accessible and trusted by all.

We are actively recruiting for multiple Software Engineers across different levels for our org!

About the Role

Mixpanel is powered by a custom distributed database. This system ingests more than 1 Trillion user-generated events every month while ensuring end-to-end latencies of under a minute and queries typically scan more than 1 Quadrillion events over the span of a month. Over the last year, our inbound traffic has doubled. As our existing customers grow in volume and we add new ones, we expect this growth in traffic to continue. The Distributed Systems engineering teams are responsible for adding new capabilities and ensuring the smooth operation of the underlying systems.

Responsibilities

Mixpanel's infrastructure runs on Google Cloud Platform. We rely on Kubernetes and Docker for orchestration and containerization of our services. We primarily use Golang for writing services and all internal communication happens via GRPC. We use a combination of C and C++ wherever Golang doesn't meet our performance goals.

As an engineer on the Distributed Systems teams, you'll be responsible for:

  • Working with other engineers to build distributed systems that can handle data at scale
  • Debugging production issues across multiple services and all levels of our infrastructure stack
  • Ensuring reliability and uptime of the services you're responsible for
  • Keeping an eye on how much your service costs every month and removing inefficiencies wherever possible
  • Improving engineering standards and holding a high bar for code quality and simplicity
  • Pushing the boundaries on how our customers analyze their product data

A typical project requires a thorough understanding of how not just your service works but also how it interacts with other components. Here are some projects we've worked on in the past to give you an idea of what to expect.

  • Most of the systems in our stack provide at least once semantics. As a result, we risk duplicating events that flow through them. To overcome this limitation, we added support for event deduplication that can work at our scale. Typical approaches for deduplication don't perform well on large amounts of data, so we had to do something highly custom for our stack. We wrote about this on our engineering blog here.
  • Back in 2019, we migrated our ingestion API service from Python to Golang for better performance and type safety. We had to do this while ensuring that both systems handle data the same way. Because we had to compare, both, HTTP responses and transformed payloads, nothing out of the box worked for us. This blog post talks about how we did the actual migration without any customer visible downtime.
  • In 2021, as our traffic grew almost 100%, the cost of storing data became untenable. Our engineers worked on an incremental way to eventually realize almost $30000 in savings per month.

If projects like the ones listed above excite you, the Distributed Systems engineering team will be a great fit.

We're Looking For Someone Who Has

We have openings across multiple distributed systems teams. We're looking for engineers who have:

  • A strong grasp of computer science fundamentals when it comes to dealing with distributed systems and networks. You'll routinely run into issues where "one in a million" chances actually happen in production
  • A knack for problem-solving and thinking from first principles. You don't shy away from any problem, no matter the scale or impact
  • A bias towards shipping early and iterating. We believe in making small incremental changes to existing systems instead of large multi-quarter undertakings
  • Experience building distributed systems or is eager to build that skillset

Additional Resources 

#LI-Remote

Compensation

The amount listed below is the total target cash compensation (TTCC) and includes base compensation and variable compensation in the form of either a company bonus or commissions. Variable compensation type is determined by your role and level. In addition to the cash compensation provided, this position is also eligible for equity consideration and other benefits including medical, vision, and dental insurance coverage. You can view our benefits offerings here.

Our salary ranges are determined by role and level and are benchmarked to the SF Bay Area Technology data cut released by Radford, a global compensation database. The range displayed represents the minimum and maximum TTCC for new hire salaries for the position across all of our US locations. To stay on top of market conditions, we refresh our salary ranges twice a year so these ranges may change in the future. Within the range, individual pay is determined by experience, job-related skills, qualifications, and other factors. If you have questions about the specific range, your recruiter can share this information.

Mixpanel Compensation Range

$229,500 - $280,500 USD

Benefits and Perks

  • Comprehensive Medical, Vision, and Dental Care
  • Mental Wellness Benefit
  • Generous Vacation Policy & Additional Company Holidays
  • Enhanced Parental Leave
  • Volunteer Time Off
  • Additional US Benefits: Pre-Tax Benefits including 401(K), Wellness Benefit, Holiday Break

*please note that benefits and perks for contract positions will vary*

Culture Values

  • Be Open: When knowledge becomes open, we can come together as a team to collaborate around a shared purpose
  • Customer Focus: Our customers’ success is our success
  • Lead Change: Everyone at Mixpanel has the capacity to make an impact on the business
  • Results Oriented: Driving results in a measurable way ensures we stay focused on the highest impact initiatives
  • One Team: We can’t win without each other

Why choose Mixpanel?

We’re a leader in analytics with over 9,000 customers and $277M raised from prominent investors: like Andreessen-Horowitz, Sequoia, YC, and, most recently, Bain Capital. Mixpanel’s pioneering event-based data analytics platform offers a powerful yet simple solution for companies to understand user behaviors and easily track overarching company success metrics. Our accomplished teams continuously facilitate our expansion by tackling the ever-evolving challenges tied to scaling, reliability, design, and service. Choosing to work at Mixpanel means you’ll be helping the world’s most innovative companies learn from their data so they can make better decisions.

Mixpanel is an equal opportunity employer supporting workforce diversity. At Mixpanel, we are focused on things that really matter—our people, our customers, our partners—out of a recognition that those relationships are the most valuable assets we have. We actively encourage women, people with disabilities, veterans, underrepresented minorities, and LGBTQ+ people to apply. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance or other similar laws that may be applicable, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. We’ve immersed ourselves in our Culture and Values as our guiding principles for the impact we want to have and the future we are building.

Apply for this job

*

indicates a required field

Resume/CV*

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf


Select...
Select...

Mixpanel does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or expression. To create an inclusive environment and ensure you are comfortable, please feel free to provide us with this information

Select...
Select...

Mixpanel Inclusion: Voluntary Demographics

At Mixpanel, we value belonging and believe in fostering an environment where diversity can thrive. Mixpanel does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or expression. In order to track the effectiveness of our efforts and to ensure we consider the needs of all our employees, please consider the following optional question. The responses will be used (in aggregate only) to help us identify areas for improvement in our hiring process. Your responses, or your choice to not respond, will not be associated with your specific application and will not in any way be used in the hiring decision. 

Select...

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in Mixpanel’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

Select...
Select...
Race & Ethnicity Definitions

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection. As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measure the effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categories is as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.

Select...

Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability

Form CC-305
Page 1 of 1
OMB Control Number 1250-0005
Expires 04/30/2026

Why are you being asked to complete this form?

We are a federal contractor or subcontractor. The law requires us to provide equal employment opportunity to qualified people with disabilities. We have a goal of having at least 7% of our workers as people with disabilities. The law says we must measure our progress towards this goal. To do this, we must ask applicants and employees if they have a disability or have ever had one. People can become disabled, so we need to ask this question at least every five years.

Completing this form is voluntary, and we hope that you will choose to do so. Your answer is confidential. No one who makes hiring decisions will see it. Your decision to complete the form and your answer will not harm you in any way. If you want to learn more about the law or this form, visit the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) website at www.dol.gov/ofccp.

How do you know if you have a disability?

A disability is a condition that substantially limits one or more of your “major life activities.” If you have or have ever had such a condition, you are a person with a disability. Disabilities include, but are not limited to:

  • Alcohol or other substance use disorder (not currently using drugs illegally)
  • Autoimmune disorder, for example, lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV/AIDS
  • Blind or low vision
  • Cancer (past or present)
  • Cardiovascular or heart disease
  • Celiac disease
  • Cerebral palsy
  • Deaf or serious difficulty hearing
  • Diabetes
  • Disfigurement, for example, disfigurement caused by burns, wounds, accidents, or congenital disorders
  • Epilepsy or other seizure disorder
  • Gastrointestinal disorders, for example, Crohn's Disease, irritable bowel syndrome
  • Intellectual or developmental disability
  • Mental health conditions, for example, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD
  • Missing limbs or partially missing limbs
  • Mobility impairment, benefiting from the use of a wheelchair, scooter, walker, leg brace(s) and/or other supports
  • Nervous system condition, for example, migraine headaches, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis (MS)
  • Neurodivergence, for example, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, dyspraxia, other learning disabilities
  • Partial or complete paralysis (any cause)
  • Pulmonary or respiratory conditions, for example, tuberculosis, asthma, emphysema
  • Short stature (dwarfism)
  • Traumatic brain injury
Select...

PUBLIC BURDEN STATEMENT: According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 no persons are required to respond to a collection of information unless such collection displays a valid OMB control number. This survey should take about 5 minutes to complete.