Back to jobs
New

Software Engineer, Data Runtime

San Francisco, US (Hybrid)

About Mixpanel

Mixpanel is the leading product intelligence and analytics platform, trusted by more than 29,000 companies to help understand how people use the products they build. By combining powerful analytics with AI that knows your business, Mixpanel helps teams see what’s working, diagnose what’s not, and decide what to build next. Learn more at mixpanel.com.

About Mixpanel

Mixpanel turns data clarity into innovation. Trusted by more than 29,000 companies, including Workday, Pinterest, LG, and Rakuten Viber, Mixpanel’s AI-first digital analytics help teams accelerate adoption, improve retention, and ship with confidence. Powering this is an industry-leading platform that combines product and web analytics, session replay, experimentation, feature flags, and metric trees. Mixpanel delivers insights that customers trust. Visit mixpanel.com to learn more.

About The Team

Mixpanel Engineering is a small, fast-moving team focused on delivering real value to customers. We build powerful AI-powered product analytics while obsessing over clarity, simplicity, and delight. Engineers here own problems end to end. You can move across the stack to ship impact without being blocked by silos or heavy process. Product innovation drives our business, and product engineering teams own that responsibility.

Our OLAP engine queries over 500 trillion events; a typical blob storage system we interact with processes 300 PiB/month at 1.2 Tbps sustained, and we run many of them across the world.

The Data Runtime team owns the data execution layer that powers every Mixpanel product. We ensure that every customer query runs fast, cheap, and reliably, at any scale.

This is an exciting time to join. Mixpanel's agentic and AI-first products are driving rapid growth in query volume, and Data Runtime is making the big bets that power it. We’re investing in elastic query compute and a distributed file cache that will let us scale query workloads dramatically without scaling cost with them. We sit at the center of the data platform, interfacing daily with Query Serving, Streaming, Core Analysis, Data Foundation, Product, and other teams across the company.

The team combines deep expertise in high-scale distributed systems and backend engineering. It's a senior-heavy team, including Staff-level engineers with years of context in the engine internals, which means you'll be surrounded by people you can learn from and grow with.

About The Role

As a Software Engineer III (L3) on Data Runtime, you'll design and build the systems that execute every query at Mixpanel. You'll contribute to the technical design for complex distributed-systems projects, from prototype to global rollout, on initiatives like elastic query compute, the distributed file cache, columnar storage internals, and compaction.

You'll work alongside some of the most senior engineers at Mixpanel, partner with peer infrastructure teams (Query Serving, Streaming, Data Foundation) and product teams (Core Analysis, AI-powered experiences) on shared architecture, and have real influence over the technical direction of the compute layer that Mixpanel's AI-first future runs on.

We're Looking For Someone Who Has

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
  • 3+ years of professional software engineering experience building and operating data infra/backend systems, with a track record of shipping quality work quickly.
  • A solid foundation in distributed systems or data infrastructure, and the drive to go deep.
  • Experience owning a project or significant component end to end: driving the design, building it, shipping it, and running it in production.
  • Strong technical communication, especially in writing, e.g., design docs, code review, async discussion across a distributed team.
  • Sound judgment in technical tradeoffs, informed by real lessons from operating systems in production.
  • High ownership and accountability.
  • A desire to be at the forefront of the infrastructure powering AI-first analytics at thousands of companies.

Technical Skills We Value

  • Languages: Go, C/C++, Python, and SQL.
  • Distributed systems: sharding/partitioning, replication, distributed scheduling, work fanout/merge, consistent hashing.
  • Storage & query engines: columnar formats (Arrow/Parquet or in-house equivalents), indexing, and compression.
  • Caching: distributed file/block caches, admission and eviction policies, tiered storage.
  • Performance engineering: profiling (pprof, perf), concurrency, memory management, benchmarking.
  • Cloud & infra: GCP (GCS, GKE, Spanner) or equivalent AWS/Azure, Kubernetes.
  • Reliability: observability (metrics, tracing, logging), SLOs, incident management.
  • AI-augmented engineering: LLM tooling to accelerate development, triage, and operations.

How We Work

  • Teams operate as autonomous pods, with engineering, product, and design working side by side on clear strategic goals. Teams have direct access to customer feedback, product usage data, business metrics, and design context.
  • We start with customer problems. We reason from first principles. We challenge assumptions. We aim for simple solutions to complex problems and avoid unnecessary abstraction.
  • Engineering owns execution, quality, and operations. There are no project managers, QA teams, or separate SREs. Ownership stays with the people building the product.
  • We value written thinking, dashboards, and demos over slide decks. We work openly using tools like Slack, GitHub, Mixpanel, Notion, Figma, and Zoom — and we lean heavily on AI-assisted development (Claude Code and beyond).
  • Our team is distributed across North America, with strong clusters in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York.

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

  • Make Bold Bets: We choose courageous action over comfortable progress.
  • Innovate with Insight: We tackle decisions with rigor and judgment - combining data, experience and collective wisdom to drive powerful outcomes.
  • One Team: We collaborate across boundaries to achieve far greater impact than any of us could accomplish alone.
  • Candor with Connection: We build meaningful relationships that enable honest feedback and direct conversations.
  • Champion the Customer: We seek to deeply understand our customers’ needs, ensuring their success is our north star.
  • Powerful Simplicity: We find elegant solutions to complex problems, making sophisticated things accessible.

Why choose Mixpanel?

We’re a leader in analytics with over 9,000 customers and $277M invested 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

Cover Letter

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

Education

Select...
Select...
Select...
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 07/31/2029

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.