Software Engineer - Backend

Nominal is building a connected test and operations platform for advanced hardware systems, enabling engineering teams to ingest data, analyze performance, automate testing, and collaborate across development. The Backend Software Engineer will design, build, and operate distributed infrastructure for telemetry and validation, including ingestion pipelines, storage systems, scalability, and production performance.

Responsibilities

• Architect and evolve distributed systems that ingest, process, and persist high-frequency telemetry and sensor data
• Design storage and indexing strategies for large, time-series, and event-driven datasets with strict performance and correctness requirements
• Tackle hard problems around scalability, backpressure, fault tolerance, and data consistency in real-time systems
• Optimize hot paths, reduce tail latency, and improve reliability as the system scales with new customers and use cases
• Collaborate closely with product, infrastructure, and customer-facing engineers to solve domain-specific problems for cutting-edge hardware teams
• Influence backend architecture and technical direction, mentor teammates, and raise the bar for system design across the org

Benefits

• 100% coverage of medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Unlimited PTO and sick leave
• Free lunch, snacks, and coffee
• Professional Development Stipend
• In-office hardware lab with a $250 project stipend
• Annual company retreat

Company

• Software for hardware testing, monitoring, and analysis
• Los Angeles, California, USA
• https://www.nominal.io/
• Founded in 2022
• 201-500 employees

Qualifications

• 3+ years building distributed systems where performance, reliability, and operational simplicity matter
• Strong experience in Go, Rust, or Java, with an emphasis on correctness, clarity, and long-lived systems
• Deep familiarity with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and production tooling like Kubernetes, Docker, and Terraform
• Hands-on experience designing or operating storage systems: time-series databases, columnar formats, or analytics engines (e.g., ClickHouse, TimescaleDB, Druid, InfluxDB, Parquet)
• Experience with streaming or data processing technologies such as Kafka, Apache Arrow, Flink, or Spark
• Comfort reasoning about distributed systems tradeoffs: latency vs. throughput, consistency vs. availability, abstraction vs. control
• Clear technical communication and a bias toward ownership: you design it, build it, ship it, and operate it
• To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State
• 3+ years building distributed systems where performance, reliability, and operational simplicity matter.

Required skills

• Apache Arrow, ClickHouse, Cloud Infrastructure, Distributed Systems, Docker, Druid, Flink, Go, InfluxDB, Java, Kafka, Kubernetes, Parquet, Rust, Spark, Storage Systems, Terraform, Time-Series Databases, TimescaleDB

Experience

• 3+ years