---
title: 'Staff Software Engineer at Starburst'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-starburst-warsaw-nmgfptzys16q'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-08'
---

# Staff Software Engineer at Starburst

- **Company:** Starburst
- **Location:** Warsaw, Poland
- **Posted:** 2026-04-08
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-08
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/starburst/jobs/5158608008

## Job description

## About Starburst

Starburst delivers enterprise intelligence at scale by giving organizations secure, governed access to all their data, wherever it lives. Built for distributed data environments, Starburst helps enterprises power AI and analytics without the cost and complexity of traditional data consolidation. With open standards including Trino and Apache Iceberg, Starburst enables trusted access to complete enterprise context while helping organizations avoid vendor lock-in. Leading global enterprises trust Starburst to fuel AI, analytics, and enterprise intelligence. Learn more at [starburst.ai](http://starburst.ai).

## About the role

As a Staff Engineer on the Spark Job Manager and Starburst Enterprise team, you will own critical backend and platform components that orchestrate distributed compute (Spark, Trino) for enterprise customers. You will lead the design and implementation of JVM-based services and the surrounding infrastructure: Kubernetes deployments, Docker image strategy, CI/CD automation, AWS integrations, and secure enterprise authentication flows. This is a staff-level role requiring architectural leadership, cross-team influence, and long-term platform ownership.

As a Staff Software Engineer at Starburst, you will:

- Own critical backend and platform components that orchestrate distributed compute (Spark, Trino) for enterprise customers.
- Lead the design and implementation of JVM-based services and the surrounding infrastructure, including Kubernetes deployments, Docker image strategy, CI/CD automation, AWS integrations, and secure enterprise authentication flows.
- Provide architectural leadership, cross-team influence, and long-term platform ownership.

Some of the things we look for:

- Deep Backend Engineering & Distributed Systems:
- 8+ years of professional backend experience, with strong expertise in Java (primary and required) and production experience building JVM-based services.
- Experience designing and operating distributed systems in production. Working with Spark, Trino/Presto, or comparable distributed compute engines is a strong plus.
- Extensive experience designing and evolving RESTful APIs, including validation, error modeling, pagination, filtering, backward-compatible versioning, and OpenAPI documentation.
- Infrastructure & Operations:
- Hands-on production experience with Kubernetes (authoring manifests/Helm charts) and strong Docker experience (multi-stage builds, image optimization, security best practices).
- Experience owning CI/CD for complex Java codebases, using GitHub Actions (preferred) or Jenkins.
- Practical AWS experience with S3 (or S3-compatible object storage), IAM roles/policies, and AWS SSO.
- Familiarity with secure authentication mechanisms: OAuth2 / OIDC, token-based auth, and session management.
- Experience implementing Metrics (Prometheus preferred), Distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry), and structured logging for JVM services is a plus.
- Staff-Level Impact:
- Proven experience leading architecture across multiple services or systems.
- Demonstrated ability to drive cross-team RFCs, break down ambiguous problems, influence engineering standards, and raise the technical bar through code reviews and mentorship.
- Own long-term platform health, not just feature delivery.
- Highly Preferred Experience:
- Experience building job orchestration platforms.
- Experience working in enterprise / B2B environments.
- Strong Python skills for automation and tooling.
- Experience running systems in hybrid or on-prem environments.
- Collaboration on open-source projects is a strong plus.
- Ability to Travel: This role will require 25% in-person travel for purposes including but not limited to new hire onboarding, team and department offsites, customer engagements, and other company events. Actual travel expectations may vary by role and business needs.

Where could this role be based?

- This role is based in our Warsaw office and follows a hybrid model, with an expectation of being onsite 2-3 days per week.

Salary ranges: 440,000 - 540,000 PLN anually Build your career at Starburst

All-Stars have the opportunity and freedom to realize their true potential. By building alongside top talent, we’re empowered to take ownership of our careers and drive meaningful change. Anchored in industry-proven technology and unprecedented success, All-Stars are taking on the challenge everyday to disrupt our industry –  and the future.

Our global workforce is supported by a competitive Total Rewards program that reflects our commitment to a rewarding and supportive work environment. This includes a variety of benefits like competitive pay, attractive stock grants, flexible paid time off, and more.

We are committed to fostering an intentional, inclusive, and diverse culture that drives deep engagement, authentic belonging, and an exceptional All-Star experience. We believe that diversity of thought, perspective, background and experience will enable us to own what we do, drive our success and empower our All-Stars to show up authentically.

Starburst provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

## About Starburst

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Starburst provides an enterprise data platform built on Trino that enables federated analytics, data lakehouse capabilities, and governed access to data across clouds, warehouses, and SaaS sources without requiring data movement.
- **Entity Type**: Private (venture-backed, specific funding round not disclosed in available sources)
- **Headquarters**: Boston, Massachusetts, USA (with major offices in San Francisco, London, Warsaw, and Tel Aviv)
- **Founded**: 2017
- **Founders**: Justin Borgman, Martin Traverso, Kamil Bajda-Pawlikowski (co-creators of the Trino open-source query engine)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Enterprise data analytics, data infrastructure, and lakehouse platforms
- **Target customers**: B2B, Fortune 500 enterprises, mid-market organizations, and startups across 60+ countries
- **Mission**: To free our customers from the tyranny of data lock-in by providing a flexible, open data stack that unifies distributed data without costly migrations.

## Products & Services
- **[Starburst Galaxy](https://www.starburst.io/)**: Fully managed, usage-based SaaS version of the Starburst platform. Enables federated query across 50+ connectors (Amazon S3, Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, PostgreSQL, etc.), built-in governance, workload isolation, and AI/BI integration (including natural language queries via AIDA and MCP endpoints).
- **[Starburst Enterprise](https://www.starburst.io/)**: Self-hosted, enterprise-grade deployment on-premises or in hybrid/multi-cloud environments. Includes all Galaxy features plus advanced security controls and support for Apache Iceberg optimization (“Icehouse”).
- **Data Products**: Governed, reusable data assets that package data with business context, ownership, access policies, and quality expectations for both human analysts and AI agents.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available in provided sources
- **Key Metric**: Trusted by more than 250 leading organizations across 60+ countries ([starburst.io](https://www.starburst.io/about/))
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not disclosed in available search results; the company has previously announced funding from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, and others (not cited in provided sources)
- **Growth Signals**: Active hiring for 23 open roles across engineering, product, sales, and support; offices in five major tech hubs; expanding AI capabilities with AIDA (AI-driven data assistant) and MCP query endpoints for agentic workflows; incremental adoption of open formats (Iceberg) without replatforming

## Competitive Advantages
- **Open-source foundation**: Built on Trino (formerly PrestoDB), the leading open-source SQL query engine, avoiding vendor lock-in.
- **Federated architecture**: Query data in place across multiple systems without moving or copying data, reducing costs and complexity.
- **Iceberg optimization**: Native support for Apache Iceberg with workload isolation and performance tuning (“Icehouse”), enabling modern lakehouse patterns.
- **Unified governance**: Enforce security, access controls, and business context (definitions, policies) across all data and queries, including those made by AI agents.
- **Scalable performance**: 7.3x cost savings, 3.2x faster analytics, and 50+ connectors cited on the homepage ([starburst.io](https://www.starburst.io/))

## Strategic Focus
- **AI integration**: Enabling governed, trusted data access for AI agents (e.g., via MCP query endpoints); developing natural-language query capabilities (AIDA).
- **Open lakehouse adoption**: Helping enterprises migrate incrementally to open table formats (Iceberg) without full replatforming.
- **Context layer**: Organizing business definitions, metadata, and data products as code so every team and AI system works from the same trusted context.
- **Global expansion**: Building out teams in India (new Engineering Site Lead role) and strengthening presence in EMEA and LATAM.

## Why Work Here
- **Remote-first culture**: “Working remotely, but more connected than ever” with flexible remote work opportunities; offices in Boston, San Francisco, London, Warsaw, and Tel Aviv for those who prefer in-person collaboration ([starburst.io/careers/](https://www.starburst.io/careers/)).
- **Comprehensive benefits**: Equity ownership, competitive compensation, comprehensive health insurance, flexible PTO, paid parental leave, life insurance, disability coverage, employee assistance programs ([starburst.io/careers/](https://www.starburst.io/careers/)).
- **Diverse and inclusive**: Commitment to building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace; annually published diversity data (e.g., female representation) ([starburst.io/careers/](https://www.starburst.io/careers/)).
- **Engineering culture**: Opportunity to work on Trino, a widely adopted open-source project; roles span Trino engine development, benchmark infrastructure, access control, connectors, and AI/ML products; strong emphasis on innovation and impact ([greenhouse.io](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/starburst)).
- **Growth opportunity**: 23 active openings across multiple departments, including senior engineering management in India and Poland, product management, enterprise sales, and professional services.

## Sources
1. [starburst.io](https://www.starburst.io/)
2. [starburst.io/about/](https://www.starburst.io/about/)
3. [starburst.io/careers/](https://www.starburst.io/careers/)
4. [job-boards.greenhouse.io/starburst](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/starburst)
5. [starburst.io/careers/open-roles/](https://www.starburst.io/careers/open-roles/)

## Other roles at Starburst

- [Senior Solution Architect (Presales)](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-solution-architect-presales-starburst-united-states-vbj61w6twx77) — United States, West
- [Alliance Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/alliance-manager-starburst-united-states-bk9wsvhzz2va) — United States
- [Security Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/security-engineer-starburst-india-11d9ms4ed5fc) — India
- [Senior Application Security Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-application-security-engineer-starburst-boston-k7swk0d82gc8) — Boston, MA
- [Field Marketing Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/field-marketing-manager-starburst-boston-1d6z0rzkhh66) — Boston, MA
- [Alliance Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/alliance-manager-starburst-london-emt6havw6tmk) — London, United Kingdom
- [Senior Software Engineer, Control Plane](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-control-plane-starburst-poland-2j72jgg2nsqa) — Poland
- [Senior Enterprise Account Executive](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-enterprise-account-executive-starburst-san-francisco-a3dtw008gzm6) — San Francisco, CA
- [Onboarding Engineer - Presales](https://feeny.ai/job/onboarding-engineer-presales-starburst-india-qd2jr79gy6p3) — India
- [Sr Director, Pipeline Strategy & Analytics](https://feeny.ai/job/sr-director-pipeline-strategy-analytics-starburst-boston-3vsss61g5px3) — Boston, MA