PostgreSQL Core Engineer

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