About this role.
Supabase is seeking a senior-level distributed systems engineer to build Multigres, its open-source horizontally scalable Postgres system. The role focuses on query routing for sharded databases, consensus and replication, materialization pipelines, change data capture, and connection-pooling infrastructure. Success requires deep expertise in Postgres internals, distributed transactions, consensus algorithms, stream processing, observability, and low-latency networking. The engineer will work asynchronously with Postgres, networking, infrastructure, and open-source community contributors. This is a fully remote full-time role with substantial ownership over foundational database infrastructure.
Role DNA
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Job Complexity
5/5Pace & Pressure
4/5Autonomy Level
5/5Communication Load
4/5Salary analysis
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Core skills
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Sample interview questions
I would define a clear shard-key strategy, maintain a strongly consistent metadata catalog, and route single-shard queries directly to the owning shard. For multi-shard queries, I would explicitly manage planning, fan-out, aggregation, failure handling, and transaction semantics while minimizing cross-shard operations through schema and routing design.
I would assess fault tolerance, leader-election behavior, operational maturity, latency, membership changes, storage guarantees, and implementation complexity. Raft is often attractive for its understandable leader-based model and mature ecosystem, while the final choice should reflect the required consistency scope and performance characteristics.
I start by defining the isolation guarantees and failure model, then make ordering, idempotency, retries, and durable state transitions explicit. I use invariants, deterministic and fault-injection tests, observability around transaction lifecycles, and careful recovery procedures to validate behavior under partial failures and network partitions.
I would capture ordered source changes with durable offsets or LSNs, ensure consumers are idempotent, and persist checkpoints only after successful application. The pipeline should support schema evolution, replay, backpressure, monitoring for lag, and reconciliation mechanisms to detect or repair divergence.
I would instrument end-to-end and per-stage latency percentiles, throughput, queue depth, replication lag, lock waits, connection-pool saturation, error rates, and resource utilization. Distributed tracing, structured logs with request and shard identifiers, profiling, and targeted load or fault tests are essential for isolating bottlenecks and failure modes.
Supabase is the Postgres development platform, built by developers for developers. We provide a complete backend solution including Database, Auth, Storage, Edge Functions, Realtime, and Vector Search. All services are deeply integrated and designed for growth.
We’re looking for an engineer to help build the future of distributed Postgres. You’ll work on Multigres, our open-source distributed database system that brings horizontal scaling to Postgres.
In this role, you’ll architect and implement critical distributed database infrastructure including sharding, consensus protocols, and materialization systems. You’ll collaborate closely with our Postgres, networking, and infrastructure teams to push the boundaries of what’s possible with distributed databases.
What You’ll Be Responsible for:
Design and implement query routing logic for sharded databases
Build consensus and replication systems to support distribute durability
Develop materialization pipelines for migrations and change data capture
Contribute to connection pooling infrastructure and intelligent workload isolation
Collaborate with the open-source community on Multigres development
You Might Be a Good Fit If You have:
This role requires deep technical expertise in distributed databases and systems. For detailed qualifications, see our contributor qualifications document.
Key areas of expertise:
Database sharding, relational algebra, and Postgres internals
Consensus protocols (Raft, Paxos, FlexPaxos) and distributed transactions
Stream processing, materialization, and change data capture
Building robust, performant distributed systems with strong observability
Low-latency infrastructure and network protocol optimization.
What We Offer
Fully Remote
We hire globally. We believe you can do your best work from anywhere. There are no Supabase offices, but we provide a WeWork membership or co-working allowance you can use anywhere in the world.
ESOP
Every team member receives ESOP (equity ownership) in the company. We want everyone to share in the upside of what we’re building together.
Tech Allowance
Use this budget to set up your ideal work environment—laptop, monitor, headphones, or whatever helps you do your best work.
Health Benefits
Supabase covers 100% of health insurance for employees and 80% for dependents, wherever you are. Your wellbeing and your family’s health are important to us.
Annual Off-Sites
Once a year, the entire company gathers in a new city for a week of connection, collaboration, and fun. It’s a highlight of our year.
Flexible Work
We operate asynchronously and trust you to manage your own time. You know what needs to be done and when.
Professional Development
Every team member receives an annual education allowance to spend on learning—courses, books, conferences, or anything that supports your growth.
About the Team
Supabase was born-remote and open-source-first. We believe our globally distributed team is our secret weapon in building tools developers love.
~400 team members
60+ countries
20+ languages spoken
Over $1B raised (including our $500M Series F)
540,000+ community members
We move fast, build in public, and use what we ship. If it’s in your project, we probably use it in ours too. We believe deeply in the open-source ecosystem and strive to support—not replace—existing tools and communities.
Annual salary information is not provided for this position. Explore salary ranges for similar roles in our Salary Directory ›
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