Software Engineer - Postgres Internals

PlanetScale is growing rapidly and reinventing the database space. The PlanetScale platform offers both Postgres and Vitess clusters. Vitess, an open-source database clustering system for horizontal scaling of MySQL, enables businesses to efficiently handle large-scale data workloads — without sacrificing developer experience.

About the role

As a PostgreSQL Core Engineer, you will spend most of your time contributing upstream to the PostgreSQL core engine and maintaining the Postgres extensions — both open-source community projects and Planetscale's proprietary extensions — that power our Postgres offering.

What You'll Do

• Author and review patches to the PostgreSQL core engine: performance, features, bug fixes, and security — landed through the pgsql-hackers mailing list and the Commitfest process.
• Maintain Postgres extensions, both open-source (community projects we depend on) and proprietary (Planetscale-owned). Includes feature work, bug fixes, performance tuning, and major-version compatibility.
• Review community patches with rigor on correctness, stability, and PostgreSQL coding conventions.
• Engage the PostgreSQL community in design discussions, the 5 (five) annual Commitfests, and conferences.
• Root-cause Postgres issues affecting Planetscale customers and turn fixes into upstream patches when applicable.
• Improve documentation for PostgreSQL and our extensions as part of every change.

What We're Looking For

Required:

• Strong C programming skills in large, established codebases.
• Deep knowledge of PostgreSQL internals: MVCC, query planner/executor, WAL, vacuum, replication, memory contexts.
• Demonstrated open-source contributions to PostgreSQL or comparable database projects (accepted patches, reviews, or extensions).
• Fluency with Git and the PostgreSQL patch workflow.
• Comfortable in Linux/BSD development environments; able to profile and benchmark database workloads.

Nice to Have:

• PostgreSQL contribution history.
• Experience authoring or maintaining a Postgres extension end-to-end (e.g., pgvector, pg_stat_statements, PostGIS).
• Background in distributed systems, storage engines, or query optimization.
• Public talks, papers, or blog posts in the Postgres ecosystem.

About You

You're someone who deeply understands what it takes to evolve PostgreSQL responsibly — both upstream and through extensions. You've shipped patches to Postgres or authored extensions before, and have strong opinions about what makes a change land cleanly versus stall in review

You enjoy wearing many hats and get energized by working on diverse problems across the stack. You ship quickly and iterate based on feedback. You collaborate effectively with engineers in different domains. You're excited about leveraging AI tools to move faster. You make pragmatic technical decisions and can work independently with minimal direction.

Why PlanetScale

We're redefining how high-growth companies manage data at scale—and we work with some of the most exciting brands in gaming, consumer tech, and B2B SaaS. As a Software Engineer, you'll be at the core of building the platform that powers world-class apps used by hundreds of millions of users worldwide. PlanetScale is a profitable company with a philosophy centered around building small teams of p99 individuals and is recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in America.

At PlanetScale we believe in supporting people to do their best work and thrive no matter the location. Our mission is to build a diverse, equitable, and inclusive company. We strive to build an inclusive environment where all people feel that they are equally respected and valued, whether they are a candidate or an employee. We welcome applicants of any educational background, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, age, citizenship, socioeconomic status, disability, pregnancy status, and veteran status.

If you have a disability, please let us know if there's any way we can make the interview process better for you; we're happy to accommodate!

Total Compensation and Pay Transparency

An employee's total compensation consists of base salary + variable comp where appropriate + benefits + equity. A member of our Talent Acquisition team will be happy to answer any further questions when we engage with you to begin the interview process.

Base salary range: $120,000 - $290,000 USD