Product Engineer (Prototyping), Office of the CTO

Astronomer designed Astro, a modern data orchestration platform, powered by Apache Airflow™. Astro enables companies to place Apache Airflow at the core of their data operations, providing ease of use, scalability, and enterprise-grade security, to ensure the reliable delivery of mission-critical data pipelines.

We’re a globally-distributed and rapidly growing venture-backed team of learners, innovators and collaborators. Our mission is to build an Enterprise-grade product that makes it easy for data teams at Fortune 500’s and startups alike to adopt Apache Airflow. As a member of our team, you will be at the forefront of the industry as we strive to deliver the world's data.

Your background may be unconventional; as long as you have the essential qualifications, we encourage you to apply. While having "bonus" qualifications makes for a strong candidate, Astronomer values diverse experiences. Many of us at Astronomer haven't followed traditional career paths, and we welcome it if yours hasn't either.

About this role

Astronomer’s R&D team is laser-focused on delivering a great experience managing Apache Airflow at scale today. The Office of the CTO lives to define what the product should look like tomorrow.

The core of this role is to experiment with new ideas and build prototypes. As a Product Engineer, you will act as a “hacker in residence” - someone with the freedom to experiment, explore big ideas, and validate concepts. You’ll be a generalist, working with whatever technology, tools, and programming languages are required to validate an idea. 

Success in this role can take one of a few forms: de-risking future product roadmap projects, publishing articles and delivering talks, and (less frequently) contributing code and features to Astronomer’s production systems.

What you get to do:

• Act as a "hacker in residence," rapidly prototyping and validating ideas using diverse technologies.

• Collaborate with the R&D team to envision and prototype next-gen features for managing Open Source technology at scale.

• Identify areas for improvement and devise innovative solutions aligned with Astronomer's long-term vision.

• Contribute to intellectual property, articles, and talks showcasing Astronomer's thought leadership.

• Communicate effectively in a remote environment, articulating research goals, progress, and outcomes.

• Convey complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.

What you bring to the role:

• Significant experience building software products. We’re not looking for experience with a specific tech stack, but we generally work with Go, Python, and React/TypeScript.

• Experience building out prototypes and early-stage products or features.

• Strong communication and collaboration skills.

• Willingness to challenge the status quo and explore uncharted territories with technologies - or, put another way, an instinct to prove things for yourself instead of accepting conventional wisdom.

• Passion for dev tools, the data space, or open source technologies.

• Empathy for the customer/user experience of both Astronomer and Apache Airflow users.

• A bias for action and ability to work independently / think creatively.

Bonus Points if you have:

• Demonstrated ability to work full-stack or understand new technologies and languages quickly.

• Familiarity with Apache Airflow or other data orchestration projects.

• Demonstrated contributions to open source projects.

• Exposure to unconventional career paths or startup environments.

The estimated salary for this role ranges from $250,000 - $175,000 based on leveling and geography, along with an equity component and a comprehensive benefits package.. This range is merely an estimate, and the width of the range reflects willingness to consider candidates with broad prior seniority. Actual compensation may deviate from this range based on skills, experience, and qualifications.

#LI-Hybrid

At Astronomer, we value diversity. We are an equal opportunity employer: we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.  Astronomer is a remote-first company.