About this role.
Dropbox is seeking an experienced Infrastructure Software Engineer to build and operate highly scalable distributed backend systems supporting hundreds of billions of files, petabytes of data, and millions of concurrent connections. The role emphasizes systems performance, reliability, security, interoperability, and data integrity across Dropbox's platform. Candidates need at least five years of professional software development experience and strong proficiency in languages such as Python, Go, C/C++, or Java. Deep familiarity with operating systems, filesystems, databases, networks, concurrency, and debugging is central to the position. Occasional on-call participation is required to resolve operational issues and maintain service quality.
Role DNA
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Job Complexity
5/5Pace & Pressure
4/5Autonomy Level
4/5Communication Load
4/5Salary analysis
Estimated compensation compared with the broader PLN market for similar roles.
Core skills
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Sample interview questions
I would begin by defining access patterns, consistency requirements, durability targets, and expected growth. I would then design a partitioned, replicated metadata architecture with carefully selected indexes, caching, observability, and online migration mechanisms, validating the design through load testing and failure-mode analysis.
I would use metrics, tracing, logs, and targeted profiling to isolate whether latency originates in application code, storage, networking, lock contention, or downstream dependencies. After validating a root-cause hypothesis, I would roll out a measured fix behind safeguards and confirm improvement against baseline service-level indicators.
I keep shared mutable state minimal, establish clear ownership boundaries, and use synchronization primitives only with well-defined invariants. I also employ race detection where available, stress testing, code review focused on locking order, and metrics for contention and queueing.
I would define actionable SLOs, instrument the service with meaningful metrics and traces, and create alert thresholds that reflect customer impact. I would also document runbooks, test rollback and recovery procedures, reduce known operational toil, and conduct post-incident reviews to drive lasting improvements.
They affect durability, I/O behavior, resource limits, scheduling, memory use, and failure handling. Understanding these layers helps engineers make informed choices about storage layouts, caching, synchronization, networking, and diagnosing production issues that cannot be explained solely at the application layer.
Role Description
As an Infrastructure Engineer, your role will be crucial in shaping and constructing the robust systems that not only support our current flagship products but also lay the groundwork for the next wave of engineering innovations. From optimizing user experiences across various projects to ensuring seamless scalability and data integrity, you’ll be at the forefront of shaping the technological backbone of our platform.
Collaborating closely with cross-functional teams, you’ll leverage your expertise to tackle audacious challenges and push the boundaries of what’s possible. Your contributions will directly impact millions of users, as every line of code you write furthers our mission to revolutionize the way people work and collaborate.
Join us in redefining the future, where your passion for building scalable, reliable systems will drive meaningful change on a global scale.
Our Engineering Career Framework is viewable by anyone outside the company and describes what’s expected for our engineers at each of our career levels. Check out our blog post on this topic and more here.
Responsibilities
- Build infrastructure capable of managing metadata for hundreds of billions of files, handling hundreds of petabytes of user data, and facilitating millions of concurrent connections.
- Assist in expanding Dropbox’s role as the data-fabric, linking hundreds of millions of applications, devices, and services worldwide, while spearheading efforts to improve interoperability and adaptability across various ecosystems.
- Measure and optimize Dropbox’s analytics platform to maintain its status as one of the most advanced in the industry for extracting meaningful insights from vast data volumes.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams to innovate and implement solutions that enhance the performance, reliability, and security of Dropbox’s infrastructure, ensuring a seamless experience for users worldwide.
On-call work may be necessary occasionally to help address bugs, outages, or other operational issues, with the goal of maintaining a stable and high-quality experience for our customers.
Requirements
- BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science or related technical field involving coding (e.g., physics or mathematics), or equivalent technical experience
- 5+ years of professional software development experience
- Demonstrated experience in building and managing large-scale, multi-threaded, and geographically distributed backend systems
- Proficient in programming and debugging across a range of languages such as Python, Go, C/C++, or Java
- Experience working with operating system internals, filesystems, databases, networks, and compilers.
- Ability to independently execute tasks at hand
Preferred Qualifications
- Familiarity with Semaphores and Mutexes
Compensation
Poland Pay Range
272 000 zł—368 000 zł PLN
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