Senior or Staff Backend Engineer (ClickHouse)

Location: Helsinki, Finland; hybrid with regular office attendance

Company

hirify.global provides a cloud data platform built around open-source databases, search, streaming, and application infrastructure across multiple cloud providers.

What you will do

• Design and lead platform initiatives covering coordination-service migrations, backup and restore architecture, cluster topology, sharding, and node lifecycle management.
• Build ClickHouse data engineering tooling, including Kafka and PostgreSQL streaming ingestion, schema conversion and evolution, and integration frameworks.
• Own the ClickHouse version lifecycle from LTS qualification and upstream regression diagnosis through general availability releases.
• Debug ClickHouse internals, replication, distributed coordination, object storage, networking, DNS, TLS, and production incidents.
• Write RFCs, drive architectural and infrastructure decisions, shape roadmap priorities, and connect engineering choices to customer impact and pricing.
• Mentor engineers through design reviews, code reviews, and pairing while improving observability, CI performance, and test reliability.

Requirements

• Expert Python development skills, including production-grade asynchronous Python and architecture of substantial systems.
• Experience operating ClickHouse at scale, optimizing queries, or contributing upstream.
• Ability to read and contribute to C++ database engine code, with deep knowledge of replication, access control, storage engines, and backup and restore semantics.
• Strong distributed systems and data engineering experience, including ZooKeeper or Keeper, cluster failure modes, streaming pipelines, Kafka, and schema management.
• Strong Linux and cloud fundamentals covering S3-compatible object storage, networking, DNS, TLS, certificates, and systemd-level debugging.
• Technical leadership experience with RFCs or design documents, multi-quarter initiatives, mentoring, product sense, AI-assisted development, and fluent written and verbal English.

Nice to have

• CDC and analytics ecosystem experience, including Debezium-style pipelines, Iceberg, or lakehouse formats.
• Benchmarking, performance engineering, capacity planning, or sizing methodology experience.
• Security engineering exposure, including certificate management and access-control models.

Culture & Benefits

• Small team with substantial technical ownership and direct influence over designs and roadmap decisions.
• Hybrid work policy with regular collaboration in the office.
• hirify.global equity plan and country-specific benefits.
• Equipment choice, professional development budget, and global Employee Assistance Program support.
• Global time-off commitment covering parental leave, sick leave, and personal time.

Hiring process

• Submit a resume for review and follow-up from the recruiting team.
• Interviews are conducted by video call or in person.