Distinguished Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure

Company Description

LinkedIn is the world's largest professional network, built to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. Our products help people make powerful connections, discover exciting opportunities, build necessary skills, and gain valuable insights every day. We're also committed to providing transformational opportunities for our own employees by investing in their growth. We aspire to create a culture that's built on trust, care, inclusion, and fun – where everyone can succeed.

Join us to transform the way the world works.

Job Description

At LinkedIn, our approach to flexible work is centered on trust and optimized for culture, connection, clarity, and the evolving needs of our business. The work location of this role is hybrid, meaning it will be performed both from home and from a LinkedIn office on select days, as determined by the business needs of the team.

This role will be based in Mountain View, CA OR Bellevue, WA.

LinkedIn’s Data Infrastructure team builds and operates some of the largest online, offline and serving systems in the world. These systems are critical to our business success and we are constantly pushing the boundaries of scale, reliability and user experience.

We are seeking a Distinguished Engineer with deep expertise in Online Infrastructure, Platforms, and Databases to provide leadership across the Data Infrastructure organization. Online Data Infrastructure at LinkedIn delivers the specialized systems required to run LinkedIn’s user-facing, online applications with high availability, low latency, and optimal performance. Ranging across relational, document, caching, graph and serving systems this is a broadly scoped role with company level impact. This leader will leverage their broad infrastructure knowledge and work across online and offline data systems, other infrastructure and product teams to drive innovation, optimize performance, increase reliability and enable superior user experiences that increase customer engagement. 

Responsibilities: 

• Develop a comprehensive understanding of LinkedIn's infrastructure, particularly focusing on Online Infrastructure and Databases, and provide domain expertise and thought leadership. 

• Lead and facilitate cross-functional technical discussions to align product and technology strategies, emphasizing developer productivity while meeting scale, performance, and efficiency requirements. 

• Define and drive technical strategies and roadmaps that translate business requirements into robust architecture and technology plans. 

• Design and architect highly scalable, resilient, and distributed systems to support Data Infrastructure objectives. 

• Establish and advocate for best practices, design patterns, and quality standards for scalable Distributed Databases and caching systems. 

• Identify and address gaps in the current infrastructure by recommending and implementing migration strategies for legacy systems. 

• Mentor and guide senior engineering talent, fostering a culture of craftsmanship, innovation, and technical excellence. 

• Represent LinkedIn as a thought leader by publishing technical papers, presenting at conferences, and driving industry innovation in Data Infrastructure. 

• Collaborate with stakeholders to ensure the infrastructure supports LinkedIn's business goals and customer needs. 

• Drive the adoption of new technologies and methodologies that enhance the performance, reliability, and maintainability of LinkedIn’s infrastructure. 

• Ensure compliance with security and privacy standards, implementing measures to protect LinkedIn’s data and systems.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications: 

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent experience

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with a focus on infrastructure, distributed systems, or databases. 

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent research experience. 

• Proven track record of technical leadership in building robust, scalable platforms

• Demonstrated expertise in designing, implementing, and managing large-scale, distributed systems that are both resilient and scalable. 

• 5+ years of experience in a technical or scientific leadership position

• Proven ability to lead and mentor engineering teams, fostering a culture of technical excellence, innovation, and collaboration. 

• Expertise in designing and implementing distributed databases, data and compute infrastructure at scale

• Experience i