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Senior Distributed Systems Engineer Jobs (NOW HIRING)

Censys

Distributed Systems Engineer (Data Platform)

$174K - $206K/yr

Role Summary: We're looking to hire a Senior Distributed Systems Engineer on our Internet Map Connections team to build highly-available and scalable, data-driven services that provide value directly ...

Censys

Distributed Systems Engineer (Data Platform)

$174K - $206K/yr

Role Summary: We're looking to hire a Senior Distributed Systems Engineer on our Internet Map Connections team to build highly-available and scalable, data-driven services that provide value directly ...

Censys

Distributed Systems Engineer (Data Platform)

$174K - $206K/yr

Role Summary: We're looking to hire a Senior Distributed Systems Engineer on our Internet Map Connections team to build highly-available and scalable, data-driven services that provide value directly ...

Censys

Distributed Systems Engineer (Data Platform)

$174K - $206K/yr

Role Summary: We're looking to hire a Senior Distributed Systems Engineer on our Internet Map Connections team to build highly-available and scalable, data-driven services that provide value directly ...

Censys

Distributed Systems Engineer (Data Platform)

$174K - $206K/yr

Role Summary: We're looking to hire a Senior Distributed Systems Engineer on our Internet Map Connections team to build highly-available and scalable, data-driven services that provide value directly ...

Netflix

Distributed Systems Engineer, L5

$100K - $700K/yr

We are looking for Distributed Systems Engineers to help evolve and innovate our infrastructure. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team to bring new perspectives as we solve the ...

Netflix

Distributed Systems Engineer, L5

$100K - $700K/yr

We are looking for Distributed Systems Engineers to help evolve and innovate our infrastructure. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team to bring new perspectives as we solve the ...

Cape

Lead Distributed Systems Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

Recruit, develop, and retain strong distributed systems engineers. Set clear technical standards. Give people the context and the room to do good work. * Cross-functional partnership. Be a credible ...

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Senior Distributed Systems Engineer information

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$176K

How much do senior distributed systems engineer jobs pay per year?

As of Sep 13, 2026, the average yearly pay for senior distributed systems engineer in the United States is $124,732.00, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $104,500.00 and $143,000.00 per year, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What is a senior distributed systems engineer?

Senior Distributed Systems Engineers are experienced professionals who design, build, and maintain large-scale computing systems that run across multiple machines or locations. They focus on ensuring reliability, scalability, and performance of distributed applications, often dealing with challenges like data consistency, fault tolerance, and network latency. These engineers typically have deep expertise in distributed computing principles, programming languages, and cloud infrastructure. They also mentor junior team members and help architect robust solutions for complex technical problems.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as a senior distributed systems engineer?

A Senior Distributed Systems Engineer requires deep expertise in computer science fundamentals, scalable system architecture, and proficiency in programming languages such as Java, Go, or Python, often supported by a relevant degree and significant experience in distributed systems. Familiarity with tools like Kubernetes, Docker, Kafka, and cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) is typically expected, along with knowledge of monitoring and CI/CD pipelines. Strong problem-solving, communication, and leadership skills help in tackling complex engineering challenges and collaborating across teams. These skills are crucial for designing robust, scalable, and reliable systems that support organizational growth and high availability.

What are some common challenges senior distributed systems engineers face when designing scalable systems?

Senior Distributed Systems Engineers often encounter challenges such as managing data consistency, ensuring fault tolerance, and minimizing latency across multiple nodes. Balancing trade-offs between availability and partition tolerance (as outlined by the CAP theorem) is a frequent consideration. Additionally, coordinating between development and operations teams to maintain system reliability and efficiently resolve issues that arise in production environments is crucial. Strong communication skills and a deep understanding of distributed architectures help address these complexities effectively.

What is the difference between Senior Distributed Systems Engineer vs Cloud Solutions Architect?

AspectSenior Distributed Systems EngineerCloud Solutions Architect
CredentialsBachelor's/Master's in CS or related, experience with distributed systemsBachelor's/Master's in CS, IT, or related, cloud certifications (AWS, Azure)
Work EnvironmentDesigning, developing, and maintaining distributed systems in tech companiesDesigning cloud infrastructure solutions for clients or internal teams
Industry UsageTech, finance, e-commerce, and enterprise sectorsIT consulting, cloud service providers, enterprise IT departments

The Senior Distributed Systems Engineer focuses on building and optimizing distributed computing systems, while the Cloud Solutions Architect designs cloud infrastructure solutions. Both roles require technical expertise and often overlap in cloud environments, but their primary responsibilities differ in scope and focus.

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Senior Distributed Systems Engineer jobs near you
Infographic showing various Senior Distributed Systems Engineer job openings in the United States as of September 2026, with employment types broken down into 1% Internship, 1% As Needed, 84% Full Time, 10% Part Time, 3% Contract, and 1% Nights. Highlights an 86% Physical, 2% Hybrid, and 12% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $124,732 per year, or $60 per hour.

Distributed Systems Engineer - Platform

San Francisco, CA • On-site, Remote

Inngest Inc
Software Development • 1 - 10 employees
Learn more about Inngest Incexternal

Full-time

Re-posted 18 days ago

Job description

Systems Engineers at Inngest build the core of our product: the durable execution layer, queueing system, state stores, and the distributed systems that connect them together. It's extremely fun, rewarding, and technical work that provides interesting challenges and deep gratification.
About us:Inngest is solving long standing developer problems in a novel way which means we're creating first-of-it's-kind solutions. We're building tools that developers will use in their everyday workflow so efforts to improve UX and performance are primary. Importantly, you'll need a strong product mindset and an interest in developer tools.
The role
To be able to build something that scales and functions well, a Systems Engineer needs to be both a generalist and a specialist. Along with our existing team, you'll be responsible for the inner workings of our queueing system (eg. working on debounce, concurrency over time), state store (handling terabytes to petabytes of storage), the API layers in-between, and sometimes the high-level SDKs that our users build with.
Your work will directly impact millions of developers, and you'll collaborate with our designers, engineers, and founders to build the best experience possible.
This role requires working time overlap with US PST. Ideally, you'd live in the SF Bay Area, but for strong candidates you may live anywhere in the United States. Our existing systems engineering team is in San Francisco and works in person several days a week.
What you'll do
  • Architect and implement solutions in our queueing layer, state store, and execution layer (eg. concurrency over time, or function debounce)
  • Plan and implement improvements on throughput, and latency at hundreds of thousands to millions of requests per second
  • Contribute to systems architecture and infrastructure changes as we grow
  • Collaborate with team members to expose internal data across metrics stores, APIs, and customer dashboards we host in our cloud UI
  • Work with backend engineers to design APIs that can be used across the Inngest cloud dashboard, dev server and CLIs
  • Dogfood the Inngest product and develop ideas for improvements, features, or integrations
  • Communicate with our users through Github, email and Discord
  • Write technical specs for features and documentation for our users

Ideal candidate
  • You've been working on distributed systems for several years
  • You've used Go or similar statically typed languages professionally for two years or more
  • You've architected, or been involved in designing, systems that handle scale
  • You understand engineering trade-offs and can make correct judgement calls on approaches available
  • You understand how to observe, monitor, and maintain the systems you design
  • You appreciate simplicity, even if it's harder to design and build

Bonus points
  • Work with compliance (SOC2, ISO27001, HIPAA, etc.) and know how to make it serve security approaches and not the other way around
  • Experienced or have a solid understanding of networking
  • Understand and have experience managing and maintaining systems, eg. SRE roles

What your first 90 days will look like
  • First week: you'll learn how we work as a team and our approach to growth. You'll also start to learn our system architecture and hopefully make a couple of small contributions to the dev server UI or our cloud dashboard.
  • By day 30, you'll be proficient with our weekly cadence of work and have contributed a new feature to our executor, state, queue, metrics, or some other component. You'll fully understand our company, product, and growth strategy and start to build up context for your product mindset.
  • By day 90, you'll have shipped significant changes to our open source project and cloud platform. You also helped define the specs. You'll have learned where you can contribute outside of the engineering domain (growth, UX design, DevRel, etc.) and contributed ideas around product and growth. We're all aligned and mutually excited about how we work together now and in the future!

What we build with
  • Backend: Go, Postgres, Redis, Clickhouse, PubSub/Kafka, k8s
  • APIs: gRPC internally, GraphQL and REST APIs for UI
  • Hosted on AWS, GCP and Bare Metal
  • Github, Linear, Slack, Notion, Figma

Apply