Description

Slack is looking for a Staff / Senior Data Infrastructure Engineer to join the Data Infrastructure team within the broader Data Engineering organization. The mission of our team is to build secure, reliable, and cost-efficient infrastructure that powers Slack’s data ecosystem. We design and operate the core data platforms that enable data engineers, analysts, and machine learning practitioners to deliver trusted insights and data products across Slack.
Our systems power critical workflows — from batch and streaming ingestion to real-time analytics and orchestration. We’re looking for strong technical leaders who can combine hands-on expertise with strategic impact, helping to scale and evolve the backbone of Slack’s data infrastructure as we grow.

You’ll play a key role in the design, development, and operation of services that underpin data ingestion, transformation, storage, and orchestration at massive scale. As a Staff / Senior Engineer, you’ll be a Directly Responsible Individual (DRI) for one or more core data services, accountable for uptime, reliability, and performance, and a subject matter expert (SME) across multiple systems over time.
Here are a few examples of what we work on:

• Enabling more realtime OLAP capabilities for internal and external customers
• Scaling our compute and orchestration layer.
• Creating and scaling agents to enable engineers and users on their workflow and data needs

What you will be doing

• Design, build, and operate reliable and scalable data infrastructure powering Slack’s analytics, ML, and data-driven decision-making.
• Serve as DRI for 1–2 core data services (e.g., EMR, StarRocks, Pinot, Hive Metastore, Airflow, Temporal, Trino), ensuring uptime, reliability, and performance.
• Drive improvements in security, cost efficiency, and developer experience across our data infrastructure.
• Build automation and self-service tools that empower data teams to easily adopt and manage data workflows.
• Collaborate closely with data engineering, platform, and security teams to design scalable, well-governed solutions.
• Contribute to observability, monitoring, and alerting via Grafana and related tooling.
• Partner with other senior engineers to define best practices, technical standards, and support models for Slack’s data ecosystem.
• Mentor and coach other engineers, modeling ownership, collaboration, and operational excellence.

What you should have

• 7+ years of software or infrastructure engineering experience, including time spent supporting data-intensive systems or data platforms.
• Proven experience in building, deploying, and operating distributed infrastructure at scale.
• Strong technical background with big data and infrastructure technologies — such as EMR, Airflow, Pinot, StarRocks, Hive Metastore, Kubernetes, or equivalent systems.
• Proficiency in Python, Golang, Bash, and SQL.
• Familiarity with CI/CD (GitHub Actions), Vault, Terraform, Chef, and Grafana.
• Deep understanding of infrastructure reliability, observability, and cost efficiency principles.
• Hands-on experience supporting data pipelines or data engineering workflows is a strong plus.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to collaborate across cross-functional teams.
• A strong sense of ownership and a drive to deliver high-impact, autonomous results.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

What we value

Slack has a positive, diverse, and supportive culture—we look for people who are curious, inventive, and collaborative. We seek engineers who care deeply about craftsmanship, reliability, and empowering others. In our work together, we strive to be smart, humble, hardworking, and—above all—collaborative.

For roles in San Francisco and Los Angeles: Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring, Salesforce will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.