Software Engineer, Datastore at Notion

This role is ideal for a mid-level backend or infrastructure engineer with a deep interest in the "guts" of a data layer. You should have a solid grasp of distr

Work type: onsite

Location: San Francisco, California | New York, New York

Salary: $130,000 – $240,000/yr

Type: Full-time

Summary

This role is ideal for a mid-level backend or infrastructure engineer with a deep interest in the "guts" of a data layer. You should have a solid grasp of distributed systems and hands-on experience scaling high-traffic databases (SQL and NoSQL) and caching layers. Since this team manages the backbone for over 100 million users, they are looking for someone who values pragmatic problem-solving over dogma and can handle the pressure of live production debugging. The compensation is highly competitive, offering up to **$240,000 base salary** plus equity. While the listing mentions "fully remote," the description clarifies a strict **hybrid culture** requiring three "Anchor Days" (Mon/Tue/Thu) in either the San Francisco or New York City offices. You'll gain massive scale experience working with AWS RDS and DynamoDB while tackling complex challenges like migrating hundreds of billions of records without downtime. **You might be a good fit if you:** * Have managed large-scale datastores like AWS RDS, DynamoDB, or ElastiCache. * Prefer building tools and platforms that help other internal software engineers work faster and safer. * Are comfortable in a fast-paced environment and willing to participate in an on-call rotation. * Live in (or plan to move to) NYC or San Francisco to meet the three-day in-office requirement.

Job Description

# About Us:

Notion helps you build beautiful tools for your life’s work. In today's world of endless apps and tabs, Notion provides one place for teams to get everything done, seamlessly connecting docs, notes, projects, calendar, and email—with AI built in to find answers and automate work. Millions of users, from individuals to large organizations like Toyota, Figma, and OpenAI, love Notion for its flexibility and choose it because it helps them save time and money.

In-person collaboration is essential to Notion's culture. We require all team members to work from our offices on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, our designated Anchor Days. Certain teams or positions may require additional in-office workdays.

# About The Role:

Datastore infrastructure is the backbone of any software product, and at Notion, it plays a critical role in ensuring our millions of users have a fast, reliable, and secure experience. Our Datastore Infra Team builds and maintains the systems that power the databases and caches behind every Notion feature. From scaling our relational and NoSQL databases to designing data migration frameworks, we ensure that Notion’s data layer remains robust and future-proof.

As part of the Datastore Infra Team, you’ll have a unique opportunity to shape how Notion manages and scales its foundational data services, enabling innovation across the company. This role is based out of our New York City or San Francisco office.

# What You'll Achieve:

• You will drive the evolution of our datastore infrastructure to meet the needs of over 100 million global users and support the rapid growth of our product and business. This includes ensuring our systems are reliable, efficient, and scalable, while evaluating and integrating new technologies to keep us ahead of emerging challenges. Your work will empower our engineers to build features with confidence, backed by a strong datastore foundation.

• You will design and deliver a Datastore Platform that simplifies how teams manage and interact with data at scale. From flexible schema management to migrating hundreds of billions of records, you’ll develop tools and frameworks that make it easier for engineers to innovate while maintaining safety, efficiency, and performance.

• You will develop the skills and confidence to debug live production systems with minimal disruption, whether replacing components or managing failovers. You will participate in an on-call rotation, responding to incidents to uphold service reliability and quickly restore normal operations.

• You will partner with product engineers and other infra teams to ensure our datastore infrastructure aligns with evolving business needs and product goals

• Familiarity with Datastore Systems: You have experience with large scale relational databases, distributed caches, and NoSQL systems. You understand how to design, scale, and optimize them to support growing business needs. Our team utilizes cloud-based datastore solutions like AWS RDS, DynamoDB, and ElastiCache to power our infrastructure.

• Systems thinker: You understand distributed systems and can design solutions that account for tradeoffs like consistency, latency, and scalability.

• Pragmatic problem-solver: You prioritize business impact and understand the balance between craft, speed, and long-term maintainability. You’re opinionated but not ideological, and you learn new technologies as you go.

• Ownership and initiative: You thrive in a fast-moving, unstructured environment and are comfortable taking ownership of ambiguous problems. You act with a bias toward action and focus on results.

• Customer Empathy: You excel at collaborating across teams, offering guidance and solutions to unblock engineers and support them in building reliable systems. With empathy at the core of your approach, you focus on addressing the needs of those who depend on datastore infrastructure.

• You don’t need to be an AI expert, but you’re curious and willing to adopt AI tools to work smarter and deliver better results

• Experience with change data capture tools like Debezium for real-time data replication and migrations.

• Experience working closely with application developers, understanding their workflows, and building datastore solutions that address their challenges, such as schema changes, performance, and data access patterns.

Notion is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. Notion considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Notion is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or an accommodation made due to a disability, please let your recruiter know. 

Notion is committed to providing highly competitive cash compensation, equity, and benefits. The compensation offered for this role will be based on multiple factors such as location, the role’s scope and complexity, and the candidate’s experience and expertise, and may vary from the range provided below. For roles based in San Francisco. and New York, the estimated base salary range for this role is $130,000 - $240,000 per year.

By clicking “Submit Application”, I understand and agree that Notion and its affiliates and subsidiaries will collect and process my information in accordance with Notion’s [Global Recruiting Privacy Policy](https://notion.notion.site/Notion-Global-Recruiting-Privacy-Policy-fc3eb4e829354a26a2bb6fd5e289b550?pvs=74) and [NYLL 144](https://notion.notion.site/Ashby-AI-Bias-Audit-2b0efdeead05803bbbfae159ec86c528).

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