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Salary: USD 210,000 - 250,000 / annual
Astronomer is the company behind Apache Airflow, the industry-leading open-source data orchestration platform used by Airbnb, Uber, OpenAI, Anthropic, Nike, Capital One, Disney, and 800+ enterprises globally. The company is building Astro, a unified DataOps platform that accelerates reliable data product development.
As a Senior Software Engineer on the Build team, you will help design and develop Astronomer's next-generation AI context layer for data—an intelligence layer powering semantic search, code generation, and automated root cause analysis for data practitioners. This role sits at the intersection of applied research, software engineering, and product development.
Key responsibilities include:
- Architecting and building the foundation of an AI-driven context layer that understands data flows across entire organizations
- Designing components for data modeling, semantic search, retrieval, and code generation
- Experimenting with LLMs, embeddings, and advanced retrieval techniques to create developer tools
- Collaborating with R&D and product teams to translate early-stage AI concepts into production features
- Solving large-scale information retrieval and search challenges leveraging Astronomer's visibility into global data pipelines
- Influencing technical vision and architecture for next-generation AI-driven data products
- Contributing to open-source initiatives and representing Astronomer in the technical community
You bring 5-8 years of software engineering experience with Python or Go, deep empathy for data professionals' workflows, and comfort with ambiguity in fast-moving research environments. Experience with LLMs, vector databases, embeddings, or applied AI is expected or a strong desire to develop it. You're creative, experimental, and excel at explaining complex systems to diverse audiences.
Bonus qualifications include passion for AI systems in data/developer tools, familiarity with Apache Airflow, open-source contributions, search/IR expertise, startup or R&D experience, and exposure to agentic systems on frontier models.
The role operates on a hybrid model with at least 3 days per week in the NYC office.
About Astronomer
AI / Data / Infrastructure — data orchestration platform and commercial home of Apache Airflow.
