--- title: 'Senior Staff Software Engineer - Query Engine at Dremio' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-staff-software-engineer-query-engine-dremio-portugal-m1th1ckkzwcd' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-11-04' --- # Senior Staff Software Engineer - Query Engine at Dremio - **Company:** Dremio - **Location:** Portugal - **Work type:** remote - **Posted:** 2026-09-07 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-04 - **Apply:** https://www.dremio.com/careers/job-postings/?gh_jid=7979074003 ## Job description Be Part of Building the Future Dremio is the unified lakehouse platform for self-service analytics and AI, serving hundreds of global enterprises, including Maersk, Amazon, Regeneron, NetApp, and S&P Global. Customers rely on Dremio for cloud, hybrid, and on-prem lakehouses to power their data mesh, data warehouse migration, data virtualization, and unified data access use cases. Based on open source technologies, including Apache Iceberg and Apache Arrow, Dremio provides an open lakehouse architecture enabling the fastest time to insight and platform flexibility at a fraction of the cost.  Learn more at [www.dremio.com.](http://www.dremio.com/) ## About the role Dremio's Query Planner & Reflections team owns the SQL planner and optimizer, built on Apache Calcite, and the reflections engine that transparently rewrites queries to use pre-computed materializations instead of raw source data. The team sits between SQL and execution, owning the systems that turn queries into efficient plans and make them fast. As a Senior Staff Software Engineer, you'll set technical direction for these systems: driving ambiguous, cross-team initiatives, raising the bar through design and code review, and growing other senior engineers. Your work will directly affect query performance, correctness, and cost across Dremio's cloud data platform. ## What you'll be doing - Set technical direction: Define architecture and roadmap for the query planner and reflections systems, including next-generation features. - Build the planner: Design, implement, test, and support planning rules, cost-based optimization, query rewriting, and reflection matching and substitution. - Own complex initiatives: Lead design and delivery of projects that cross team boundaries, working with Query Execution, Catalog, Datalake, and Product. - Work with open source: Work deeply with Apache Calcite and Apache Iceberg, and drive contributions upstream where it benefits Dremio. - Diagnose difficult problems: Investigate query planning correctness and performance issues, including reflection matching, using query profiles, telemetry, benchmarks, logs, and production data. - Design for every deployment: Build systems that run correctly across Dremio's deployment models and public clouds. - Use AI-assisted development tools: Apply AI tools to code comprehension, debugging, test generation, documentation, and incident analysis. - Apply engineering judgment: Validate AI-generated code and recommendations through review, testing, benchmarking, and engineering judgment. - Raise the engineering bar: Participate in design and code reviews, set technical standards, and mentor senior and staff-level engineers. - Partner across the company: Work with Product on multi-quarter roadmap decisions and with Support and field engineering on the highest-impact customer issues. ## What we're looking for - Software engineering experience: 10+ years developing production software, including 5+ years of strong Java. - Query planning and optimization: Deep understanding of cost-based optimization and rule-based query rewriting, ideally with hands-on experience in Apache Calcite or a similar framework. - Database fundamentals: Strong knowledge of SQL, query processing, performance, and schema design. - Computer science fundamentals: Strong foundation in data structures, algorithms, concurrency, and multithreaded programming. - Technical leadership: Track record of driving system-level architecture decisions, leading complex cross-team initiatives, and mentoring senior engineers. - Access control: Experience with role-based or fine-grained access control in data platforms or database systems is a plus. - Cloud and storage: Understanding of distributed file systems and object stores such as S3, ADLS, or HDFS; experience with AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. - Engineering judgment: Ability to evaluate tradeoffs, validate solutions rigorously, and make sound decisions when working with unfamiliar or AI-assisted implementations. - Communication and ownership: Ability to navigate ambiguous, cross-org problems independently, with strong communication skills and a commitment to delivering high-quality software. Bonus points if you have - Query engines: Experience with distributed query engines, database engines, or large-scale data processing systems. - Planning techniques: Materialized view matching, query rewriting, statistics and cardinality estimation, or cost model design. - Open source: Contributions to Apache Calcite, Apache Iceberg, or similar planner and data platform projects. - Data platforms: Apache Arrow, Apache Iceberg, Parquet, Spark, or cloud object stores. - Languages: C++. ## What we value At Dremio, we hold ourselves to high standards when it comes to People, Thinking, and Action. Our Gnarlies (that's what we call our employees) communicate with clarity, drive accountability, and are respectful towards each other. We confront brutal facts and focus on results while operating with a sense of urgency and building a "flywheel". People who like to jump in and drive momentum will thrive in our #GnarlyLife. Dremio is an equal opportunity employer supporting workforce diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, protected veteran status, disability status, or any other unlawful factor. Dremio is committed to providing any necessary accommodations for individuals with disabilities within our application and interview process. To request accommodation due to a disability, please inform your recruiter. Dremio has policies in place to protect the personal information that employees and applicants disclose to us. Please click [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CB96QFmOX-bFy48YFOe2GO5lmdawOpKKBj8DpTgsuNg/edit?usp=sharing) to review the privacy notice. Important Security Notice for Candidates At Dremio, we uphold trust and transparency as paramount values in all our interactions with customers, partners, employees, and the general public. We have been targeted by individuals creating fake domains similar to ours to scam prospects and candidates. Please note that all official communications from us will be from an @dremio.com domain. If you suspect you've been targeted by a scam, it's imperative to report the incident to your local law enforcement agencies. For more information about this type of scam, please refer to Dremio's official statement [here](https://www.dremio.com/blog/stay-alert-for-fraudulent-recruitment-attempts-that-falsely-claim-association-with-dremio/). Dremio is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes and will not pay fees to any third-party agency or company that does not have a signed agreement with the Company. ## About Dremio ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Dremio provides the Agentic Lakehouse, an open, high-performance data lakehouse platform built on Apache Iceberg, Apache Arrow, and Apache Polaris, designed to accelerate AI and analytical workloads across all enterprise data. - **Entity Type**: Private (Series E) - **Headquarters**: Santa Clara, California, USA - **Founded**: 2015 - **Founders**: Tomer Shiran (CEO), Jacques Nadeau ## Core Business - **Primary industry/industries**: Data Infrastructure, Data Analytics, AI/ML Infrastructure - **Target customers**: B2B, Enterprise (trusted by Shell, TD Bank, Michelin, Amazon, Vanguard, World Bank Group, Maersk, E.ON, RWE) - **Mission or purpose statement**: To empower every knowledge worker and AI agent with instant, governed access to enterprise data through any LLM or tool of their choice. ## Products & Services - **Dremio Agentic Lakehouse**: An open, high-performance data lakehouse platform built on Apache Iceberg, Apache Arrow, and Apache Polaris. It features an AI Semantic Layer for business context, federated queries across any source without ETL, and autonomous management (clustering, optimization, compaction). It is designed to connect AI agents and analytics tools to enterprise data. - **Apache Polaris (Catalog)**: Dremio is a co-creator of Polaris, the leading Iceberg catalog, providing a fully managed and supported catalog with fine-grained and role-based access control for end-to-end governance. - **Apache Arrow (Engine)**: Dremio is a co-creator of Apache Arrow, the leading columnar, in-memory representation and interchange, which powers Dremio's intelligent query engine with LLVM-based code generation for maximum CPU efficiency. - **AI Semantic Layer**: Provides business context (metrics, definitions, relationships) to AI agents, ensuring they draw from the same source of truth and deliver accurate, trusted insights. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available (Private company). Dremio has raised over $400M in total funding. - **Key Metric**: Total Funding of over $400M (Series E). Trusted by 2,000+ companies. - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Key investors include Sapphire Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, and others. Partners include AWS, Snowflake (via integrations), and others. - **Growth Signals**: Dremio is a lead contributor to Apache Iceberg and co-creator of Apache Arrow and Apache Polaris. In 2025, SAP announced its intent to acquire Dremio, signaling a major exit and validation of the technology. The company has 150,000+ users and serves 2,000+ companies. ## Competitive Advantages - **Open Standards Leadership**: As a co-creator of Apache Iceberg, Apache Arrow, and Apache Polaris, Dremio is deeply embedded in the open-source data ecosystem, ensuring interoperability and preventing vendor lock-in. - **Agentic Lakehouse**: The only lakehouse platform built specifically for AI agents, with an integrated AI Semantic Layer that provides business context and governance, ensuring AI agents deliver accurate, trusted answers. - **Zero ETL**: Federated queries allow users to access data across any source without moving or copying it, reducing complexity and cost. - **Autonomous Management**: The lakehouse self-optimizes with automatic clustering, compaction, and query acceleration (Autonomous Reflections), reducing administrative overhead. - **Performance**: Claims 10x faster query performance and 61-73% savings on data reads (per Nucleus Research). ## Strategic Focus - **AI-First Operations**: Dremio is embedding AI across all functions (engineering, sales, support) and building its platform specifically for AI agents. - **Open Standards Leadership**: Deepening its role as a key contributor to Apache Iceberg, Arrow, and Polaris to ensure interoperability and community-driven innovation. - **Agentic Data Platform**: The primary strategic focus is on becoming the definitive data platform for AI agents, providing a unified semantic layer and governed access for any LLM or tool. - **Growth & Scale**: Following the announced acquisition by SAP, the strategic focus will shift toward integration and scaling within SAP's ecosystem. ## Why Work Here - **Culture**: Dremio's culture is built on curiosity, urgency, and the belief that data can transform how people work. Core values include "Be Curious, Move Urgently," "Deliver Outcomes, Not Adoption," "Empower the Knowledge Worker," "Keep It Simple," and "Operate AI-First." - **Work Environment**: Hybrid workplace model. The company emphasizes "Focus on Results" and believes different roles call for different work environments. - **Perks & Benefits**: Pre-IPO stock options, volunteer time off, local benefits in each country, and a strong focus on learning and development (career goals, continuous feedback, "Gnarly Buddy" program). - **Recognition**: Named one of the "2022 Best Places to Work in the Bay Area" by the San Francisco Business Times. - **Engineering Culture**: Strong emphasis on open-source contribution (Apache Iceberg, Arrow, Polaris). The company is scaling fast and thinking in terms of scalability to serve hundreds and thousands of customers. The culture values clear communication, accountability, and respect. - **Team**: Employees are called "Gnarlies," and the mascot is "Gnarly the Narwhal." The company emphasizes a "gnarly" attitude of achieving unprecedented outcomes. ## Sources 1. [dremio.com](https://www.dremio.com/about/) 2. [dremio.com](https://www.dremio.com/) 3. [dremio.com](https://www.dremio.com/careers/) 4. [dremio.com](https://www.dremio.com/why-dremio/) 5. [dremio.com](https://www.dremio.com/careers/job-postings/) ## Other roles at Dremio - [Staff Software Engineer - Connectivity](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-connectivity-dremio-portugal-g3qwkb4kpqn4) — Portugal - [Software Engineer - Query Execution](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-query-execution-dremio-portugal-ttz9hgs36e7b) — Portugal - [Senior Technical Release Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-technical-release-manager-dremio-united-states-mpqakrrxknrh) — United States - [Senior Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-dremio-portugal-0emc2f9rs91c) — Portugal - [Senior Product Manager – Core Platform Infrastructure](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-product-manager-core-platform-infrastructure-dremio-united-states-d423wes69n70) — United States - [Future Opportunities](https://feeny.ai/job/future-opportunities-dremio-remote-bkrt600ryh84)