Backend Infrastructure Engineer: Connectors (Rust)

ABOUT FELDERA Feldera is redefining how engineers compute over changing data. Powered by an award-winning breakthrough in database theory (DBSP), our platform incrementally maintains even the most complex SQL views as data changes, even when pipelines have hundreds of joins, aggregates, unions, and even recursion. It has allowed leading enterprises to have always-on real-time insights over both live and historical data, with 10x lower cost and 100x faster time-to-production. In this role, you’ll focus on our secure, scalable, production-grade self-hosted platform; one that customers deploy on their own infrastructure, from laptops to multi-node clusters. THE ROLE We're looking for a Rust backend engineer to own and evolve Feldera's connector ecosystem. You'll build and maintain connectors with systems like Delta Lake, Apache Iceberg, Kafka, and Postgres. This means working deep in the details of each system's storage formats, wire protocols, transactional semantics, and change-data-capture mechanisms, and turning that into ingest and output adapters that are fast, correct, and resilient to failure. WHAT YOU’LL DO - Connector engineering: Own and evolve Feldera's input and output connectors for data lakes (Delta Lake, Iceberg), streaming systems (Kafka and the broader Kafka ecosystem), and databases (Postgres and other OLTP/OLAP stores). - Change data capture: Build robust CDC ingestion that turns upstream changes into correct, ordered, and consistent change streams into Feldera pipelines. - Connector framework: Design and improve the shared abstractions, APIs, and tooling that make authoring, testing, and operating connectors fast and consistent. - Formats & protocols: Work at the level of table formats (Parquet, Delta, Iceberg metadata), serialization formats (Avro, JSON, Protobuf), and wire protocols to integrate cleanly and efficiently with each system. - Correctness & fault-tolerance: Ensure connectors are reliable and operate without data loss or duplication beyond stated guarantees. - Performance: Push connector throughput and latency to keep pace with demanding production workloads. - Troubleshooting: Debug complex distributed systems issues spanning Feldera and external systems in customer environments. MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS - Strong proficiency in Rust, or strong systems-programming experience in a comparable language (C++, Go, Java/Scala) with a demonstrated ability to ramp quickly on Rust. - Experience building data integrations, connectors, or pipelines in production — moving data between storage systems, streaming platforms, or databases. - Hands-on experience with one or more of: Kafka, Delta Lake, Iceberg, Postgres, or comparable streaming/lakehouse/database systems. - Working knowledge of data serialization and table formats (e.g. Avro, Protobuf, JSON, Parquet). - Understanding of distributed-systems fundamentals: delivery semantics, ordering, checkpointing, and fault recovery. - Strong troubleshooting skills and the ability to debug complex issues across system boundaries. - Self-directed with excellent communication skills and the ability to work effectively in a remote team. Candidates must have authorization to work in their country of residence. We are unable to sponsor employment visas at this time. WORKING AT FELDERA We’re a small, technical team building a category that doesn’t exist yet. A few things worth knowing before you apply: - Fully remote. Distributed across the U.S. and abroad. We hire for timezone overlap, not location. - Flat organization with high autonomy, ownership and asynchronous collaboration. You’ll work directly alongside the founders. - Fast and honest. We move quickly, decide based on evidence, course-correct openly, and expect you to do the same. - Rewarded for impact, not tenure. We recognize what you ship, the outcomes it drives, and how much you raise the team's ceiling. If this sounds energizing, do apply. If not, we’re probably not the right fit. COMPENSATION & BENEFITS - Comp