Location: Zurich, Switzerland (Hybrid role - not available fully remotely)
Role Overview
As a Staff Software Engineer, you’ll be a technical leader in the design and implementation of the large-scale, distributed infrastructure that powers NetFabric. This is a highly impactful, hands-on role where you’ll shape system architecture, influence product direction, and solve hard problems in data pipelines, storage systems, and service reliability.
You’ll work on systems that process billions of events, terabytes of streaming data, and latency-sensitive queries, ensuring they run reliably and scale seamlessly as we grow.
What You’ll Do:
Design & build distributed systems: Develop core backend services and data infrastructure that ingest, store, and process network telemetry data at scale.
Architect for reliability and scalability: Own critical design decisions around fault tolerance, data durability, replication, and system performance.
Work across the data plane: Build streaming data pipelines and event-driven services with Kafka, integrate with analytical databases like ClickHouse, and optimize data models for high-throughput, low-latency workloads.
Drive performance & resilience: Identify bottlenecks and design for horizontal scalability, high availability, and graceful degradation under load.
Own features end-to-end: From design and prototyping through deployment and monitoring, you’ll ensure the systems you build are production-grade and observable.
What We’re Looking For:
Strong systems background: 5+ years building and scaling distributed backend systems, data platforms, or large-scale infrastructure.
Deep experience with data technologies: Proficiency in databases (SQL and NoSQL), streaming platforms like Kafka, and designing reliable data pipelines.
Reliability mindset: Solid understanding of fault-tolerant design, observability, testing strategies, and operational excellence (SLIs/SLOs, incident response).
Performance-first thinking: Proven track record of optimizing throughput, latency, and resource efficiency in complex systems.
Collaborative leadership: Comfortable making architectural decisions, mentoring peers, and influencing technical strategy.
Pragmatic approach: Finds the right balance between short-term “good enough” solutions and long-term evolvability and scalability of the solutions
Bonus Points:
Experience with ClickHouse, time-series databases, or columnar storage systems.
Exposure to real-time analytics, stream processing frameworks, or event-driven architectures.
Background in networking, observability, or telemetry platforms.
Familiarity with cloud-native environments (Kubernetes, containers, CI/CD, etc.).
Why NetFabric?
Immediate impact & ownership: Dive into a small but fast-growing team where your contributions will make a tangible difference from day one.
Growth & collaboration: Lead and innovate alongside thought leaders and award-winning researchers from ETH Zurich, tackling the most exciting challenges in high-performance data processing, network modeling, AI and, LLMs. Immerse yourself in an environment that champions continuous learning and cutting-edge solutions.
Equity & competitive salary: Receive a comprehensive compensation package with stock options, offering you a stake in NetFabric’s success, and additional benefits to ensure your well-being.
Flexible working: Split your week between our Zurich office (Tue, Thu, Fri) and home office (Mon, Wed), and set your own working hours around our core periods. We value your unique rhythm and believe that flexibility is key to top performance, so tailor your schedule to fit your needs and optimize your productivity.
Our team spirit: At NetFabric, our culture is all about putting our customers first and working smart. We believe in open conversations where everyone’s ideas matter and everyone feels empowered to challenge each other’s ideas. We stay grounded and supportive, always driven by good intentions to grow and succeed together.
Join Us in Shaping the Future!
We’re on the lookout for talented individuals, not just checkboxes on a CV. If you’re an exceptional performer and this role feels like a fit, even if you don’t meet every single requirement, we’d love to hear from you.
How to apply
Reach out to us at careers@netfabric.ai – we can’t wait to connect with you! Please include your CV and/or LinkedIn profile in your application and briefly mention what intrigues you about NetFabric. If you are considering applying at a later time, you can subscribe to updates here.