---
title: 'Software Engineer - PlanetScale Vitess at PlanetScale'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-planetscale-vitess-planetscale-emea-5mjyv9zdycfr'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-12'
---

# Software Engineer - PlanetScale Vitess at PlanetScale

- **Company:** PlanetScale
- **Location:** EMEA
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2025-07-24
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-12
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/planetscale/jobs/4009746009

## Job description

PlanetScale is growing rapidly and reinventing the database space. The PlanetScale platform offers both Postgres and Vitess clusters. Vitess, an open-source database clustering system for horizontal scaling of MySQL, enables businesses to efficiently handle large-scale data workloads — without sacrificing developer experience.

Our customers entrust us with what is often their most precious digital asset, their data, so the stakes couldn't be higher. We're looking for a Software Engineer to join our core engineering team and help us build the next generation of database infrastructure.

What's the job to be done?

- You will design and build critical systems that power PlanetScale's database platform, serving millions of queries per second for some of the world's largest applications.
- You will collaborate with a team of expert engineers to solve complex distributed systems challenges.
- You will work independently to solve engineering and business problems with little direction and high autonomy.
- You will work directly with customers to understand their needs and translate them into robust technical solutions.

These attributes best describe you…

- You are passionate about building high-quality, scalable systems and take pride in writing clean, maintainable code.
- You have strong experience with distributed systems, databases, and performance optimization.
- You are comfortable working with large codebases and can quickly understand and contribute to complex systems.
- You thrive in a collaborative environment and enjoy mentoring junior engineers.
- You have excellent problem-solving skills and can debug complex issues across multiple systems.
- You are self-motivated and can work independently with minimal guidance while making sound technical decisions.

## What you will need

- 5+ years of software engineering experience with a focus on backend systems
- Strong proficiency in Go, with experience in other languages like Python, Java, or C++
- Experience with MySQL or other relational databases
- Working knowledge of Kubernetes and containerized applications
- Experience building and operating distributed systems at scale

What else will help you be successful

- Experience with database internals, query optimization, or distributed consensus algorithms
- Contributions to open-source projects, especially in the database or infrastructure space
- Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure)
- Knowledge of monitoring, observability, and debugging tools
- Previous experience at a high-growth technology company

## Why PlanetScale

We're redefining how high-growth companies manage data at scale—and we work with some of the most exciting brands in gaming, consumer tech, and B2B SaaS. As a Software Engineer, you'll be at the core of building the platform that powers world-class apps used by hundreds of millions of users worldwide. PlanetScale is a profitable company with a philosophy centered around building small teams of p99 individuals and is recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in America.

At PlanetScale we believe in supporting people to do their best work and thrive no matter the location. Our mission is to build a diverse, equitable, and inclusive company. We strive to build an inclusive environment where all people feel that they are equally respected and valued, whether they are a candidate or an employee. We welcome applicants of any educational background, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, age, citizenship, socioeconomic status, disability, pregnancy status, and veteran status.

If you have a disability, please let us know if there's any way we can make the interview process better for you; we're happy to accommodate!

Total Compensation and Pay Transparency

An employee's total compensation consists of base salary + variable comp where appropriate + benefits + equity. A member of our Talent Acquisition team will be happy to answer any further questions when we engage with you to begin the interview process.

Base salary range: $120,000 - $290,000 USD

## About PlanetScale

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: PlanetScale is a fully managed relational database platform for Vitess and Postgres, bringing scale, performance, and reliability without sacrificing developer experience.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series C)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2018
- **Founders**: Jiten Vaidya, Sugu Sougoumarane, and the co-creators/maintainers of the Vitess open source project

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Cloud Database Infrastructure / Software Development
- Target customers: B2B; primarily mid-market to enterprise companies with high-scale database needs (also serves SMBs via self-serve plans starting at $5/month)
- Mission or purpose statement: To build the future of databases — the database their team wished they had at previous companies like YouTube, Facebook, GitHub, and Slack.

## Products & Services
- **[PlanetScale Vitess (MySQL)]**: A fully managed MySQL-compatible database powered by the Vitess open-source project. Offers horizontal sharding for unlimited scalability, zero-downtime schema changes, and high availability. Used by companies like Slack, HubSpot, and GitHub.
- **[PlanetScale Postgres]**: A fully managed PostgreSQL database built for performance and reliability. Features NVMe-backed performance ("PlanetScale Metal"), connection pooling, branch-per-environment workflows, and automated failover. Starts at $5/month.
- **[Neki]**: A next-generation Postgres sharding architecture (currently in private early access) designed for massive scale and fault tolerance on PostgreSQL workloads.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed; last known Series C was $50M (announced November 2021)
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding of **$105M** across 3 rounds; estimated annual revenue of **$4.5M** (per LinkedIn)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: SignalFire (Seed lead), Andreessen Horowitz (Series A & C lead), and other investors.
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew **57.6% YoY** (81 employees as of mid-2025), with operations in 14 countries. LinkedIn followers grew 36.6% in the last year. SOC 2 Type 2+ and HIPAA compliant; PCI DSS 4.0 Level 1 Service Provider.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Founding team = Vitess creators**: Built by the original creators and maintainers of Vitess (the CNCF project that scales YouTube, Slack, and GitHub), giving them unmatched expertise in distributed MySQL.
- **Performance leadership**: PlanetScale Metal is benchmarked as the fastest Postgres in the cloud, with unlimited IOPS on NVMe drives.
- **Superior developer experience**: Unique features like database branching (branch-per-environment), revertable schema changes with zero data loss, and "Database Traffic Control" for query budget management.
- **High reliability**: SLA of 99.999% for multi-region deployments and 99.99% for single-region deployments.
- **Cost advantage**: Positions itself as less expensive than Amazon RDS/Aurora for ~85% of migrated workloads.

## Strategic Focus
- **Postgres expansion**: Launching and scaling PlanetScale Postgres, including the Neki sharding architecture, to capture the growing Postgres market.
- **Horizontal scaling for Postgres**: Neki is a key differentiator — bringing Vitess-style sharding to PostgreSQL workloads.
- **Enterprise compliance**: Deepening SOC 2, HIPAA, and PCI DSS compliance to win larger enterprise deals.
- **Developer education**: Investing in developer relations and education to drive adoption (e.g., MCP server for AI agent access, extensive documentation).
- **Global infrastructure**: Expanding multi-region support and bring-your-own-cloud (PlanetScale Managed) options.

## Why Work Here
- **Remote-forward culture**: Highly distributed team across the US and EMEA; many roles are listed as "Remote - US" or "Remote - EMEA."
- **World-class engineering team**: Founded by database experts with a combined 600+ years of experience scaling systems at companies like Google, Facebook, YouTube, Dropbox, and GitHub. "Experts leading experts" is a core value.
- **Values-driven culture**: Core values include "Every day matters," "We are fearless," "No passengers" (everyone drives the company forward), and "No replacement for displacement" (speed and performance matter).
- **High-impact work**: Employees work on solving some of the hardest problems in distributed systems and database infrastructure.
- **Compensation**: Public salary ranges (e.g., Software Engineer: ~$138k+/annual, Account Executive: ~$140k+/annual), indicating transparency.
- **Notable perks**: SOC 2/HIPAA/PCI compliant infrastructure; modern tech stack; work with Vitess, Postgres, and cloud-native technologies.
- **Hiring restrictions**: Cannot hire from sanctioned countries (North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Crimea) or Mainland China due to US regulations.

## Sources
1. [planetscale.com](https://planetscale.com/)
2. [planetscale.com/about](https://planetscale.com/about)
3. [planetscale.com/careers](https://planetscale.com/careers)
4. [planetscale.com/docs/what-is-planetscale](https://planetscale.com/docs/what-is-planetscale)
5. [linkedin.com/company/planetscale](https://www.linkedin.com/company/planetscale)

## Other roles at PlanetScale

- [Brand Designer](https://feeny.ai/job/brand-designer-planetscale-united-states-5xdafhk747av) — United States
- [Sales Development Representative](https://feeny.ai/job/sales-development-representative-planetscale-san-francisco-xaskqzt5fqsy) — San Francisco, CA
- [Customer Support Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/customer-support-engineer-planetscale-emea-tm32e6rwd1st) — EMEA
- [Software Engineer - Internal Tools](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-internal-tools-planetscale-san-francisco-gre3a4js3b0z) — San Francisco, CA
- [Head of Events](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-events-planetscale-san-francisco-twwtbw0mjzs7) — San Francisco, CA
- [Software Engineer - Neki Orchestration](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-neki-orchestration-planetscale-san-francisco-bay-area-17wvnw7mrk4v) — San Francisco Bay Area, OR
- [Software Engineer - PlanetScale Postgres](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-planetscale-postgres-planetscale-remote-ztb3q0h8cqcs)
- [Software Engineer - Insights](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-insights-planetscale-san-francisco-bay-area-7bg68y1amz5p) — San Francisco Bay Area, OR
- [Solutions Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/solutions-engineer-planetscale-emea-na-8nt7qr7hwjcp) — Emea, / Na
- [Developer Educator](https://feeny.ai/job/developer-educator-planetscale-san-francisco-k6cdbr77v42h) — San Francisco, CA