Greenhouse ·
full-timeSoftware Engineer, Distributed Systems
Mixpanel · San Francisco, US (Hybrid)
Mixpanel provides a product intelligence and analytics platform that helps organizations understand user behavior through AI-driven insights. As a Software Engineer on the Data Runtime team, you will be responsible for designing and building the execution layer that powers the company's analytics queries. This role involves working on high-scale distributed systems, including projects like elastic query compute, distributed file caching, and columnar storage internals. You will contribute to the technical architecture from the initial prototype phase through to global production rollout. Day-to-day responsibilities include collaborating with infrastructure and product teams to ensure queries remain fast, reliable, and cost-effective as query volumes grow. This position is well-suited for engineers with a strong background in backend infrastructure or distributed systems who enjoy owning projects end-to-end. You should be comfortable navigating complex technical tradeoffs and communicating architectural decisions through design documentation and code reviews. The role offers the opportunity to work alongside senior engineering staff on critical infrastructure that supports the company's AI-first product roadmap.
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
| Role | Software Engineer, Distributed Systems |
|---|---|
| Company | Mixpanel |
| Location | San Francisco, US (Hybrid) |
| Type | internship |
| Compensation | Not disclosed |
| Posted | 2026-10-01 |
| Deadline | Rolling |
Typical process for this type of role
A general guide — the exact steps for this specific listing may vary; check the original posting for details.
- 1ApplicationSubmit your resume through the apply link.
- 2ScreeningRecruiter reviews your background against the role.
- 3AssessmentA technical test, assignment, or coding round, depending on the role.
- 4Interview(s)One or more rounds with the hiring team.
- 5OfferOffer letter with compensation and start date.
Before you apply
0/4Software Engineer, Distributed Systems at Mixpanel: frequently asked questions
- What is the salary for this role?
- Mixpanel has not stated compensation in the listing. Check the original posting or ask during the application process.
- Is the Software Engineer, Distributed Systems position remote, hybrid or onsite?
- The listing gives San Francisco, US (Hybrid) as the location and does not state a work mode.
- What is the application deadline?
- Mixpanel has not listed a fixed deadline, so apply early in case the opening is filled.
- How do I apply for the Software Engineer, Distributed Systems role?
- Use the Apply button on this page. It opens the original listing on job-boards.greenhouse.io, where you submit your application with the company.
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['Annual Salary Range $243,290 — $295,250 USD', 'Location: San Mateo, CA']