Software Engineer - Systems at Spiral (San Francisco, CA)
Spiral· San Francisco, CA·
Role details
Work type
Onsite
Employment
Full-Time
Job description
ABOUT SPIRAL
Spiral builds a fast analytical database for multimodal, multi-rate data streams, on top of the open source Vortex file format. Our users are AI/ML researchers and AI infra engineers developing models in complex domains, such as weather & climate, financial, time-series, genomics, point-clouds, videos, and images. They spend their days waiting on data loaders, writing video or sensor data pipelines, and watching expensive GPUs sit idle on I/O. We make that pain go away.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
We’re looking for exceptional engineers with deep experience in low-level, high-performance software and cloud-scale storage systems.
- 5+ years of experience writing high-quality production code
- Strong foundation in operating systems and systems programming
- Proven track record in performance engineering
- Familiarity with tools like Apache Arrow, Parquet, DataFusion, Clickhouse, or DuckDB is a plus
- Understanding of cutting-edge ML infrastructure stack (e.g. PyTorch, CUDA) is also a plus
- Experience with Rust is a bonus
- Willingness to work in-person at our NYC, SF, or London office
Why work at Spiral
- Culture: Deep-tech startup with a strong open-source ethos (Vortex, FastLanes, etc.). Company describes itself as “built for the machine consumer” – ideal for engineers passionate about high-performance computing, storage, and AI infrastructure.
- Remote/Hybrid Policy: Not explicitly stated, but offices in New York and London suggest a hybrid model; many technical hires are likely remote-friendly.
- Notable Perks & Engineering Culture: 63% of employees are in technical roles. Talent sourced from Palantir, Microsoft, Monzo, Carnegie Mellon, and LangChain. The engineering team writes Rust, Zig, and CUDA, and works on bleeding-edge compression and database internals. Small team (18 people) with major impact on the LF AI ecosystem.
- Career Path: Fast growth (72.7% headcount increase in a year) means early employees can shape product direction and architecture.