Principal Distributed Systems Engineer

Home > Golang programming jobs

Principal Distributed Systems Engineer in USA new

IonQ
Full time
Email

USA
10/01/2026
Report

Santa Clara, CA

Responsibilities

Own the distributed backend architecture and multi-year technical roadmap, including platform availability, scalability, and cost targets.
Lead architecture reviews and define design standards, reference architectures, decision records, and cross-team technical initiatives.
Architect high-throughput ingestion, network telemetry, event streaming, time-series storage, and data APIs.
Build production services, prototypes, and reference implementations while reviewing critical designs and code.
Establish observability, multi-tenant isolation, access control, data governance, reliability, and incident-response practices.
Set the multi-cloud Kubernetes and infrastructure-as-code architecture across AWS, GCP, and Azure.
Mentor Senior, Staff, and Senior Staff engineers and act as a cross-organizational technical authority.

Requirements

15+ years of software engineering experience building and operating distributed backend systems and platforms at scale, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Demonstrated hands-on architecture experience defining multi-year roadmaps for large-scale distributed platforms and delivering them to production.
Deep experience with event streaming, high-throughput ingestion pipelines, and time-series or large-scale data stores.
Strong knowledge of distributed-systems concepts including consistency models, failure modes, backpressure, idempotency, and delivery-semantics tradeoffs.
Hands-on proficiency in Go, Rust, Java, or Scala and the ability to build reference implementations and review production code.
Extensive AWS or other cloud-native architecture experience involving containerization, Kubernetes, infrastructure-as-code, security, and cost optimization.
Experience designing multi-tenant platforms with data isolation, access control, governance, observability, and reliability frameworks.
Established record of setting technical direction beyond one team, influencing stakeholders, and mentoring senior engineers across distributed organizations.
Preferred qualifications include a master’s degree, Go or Rust production experience, network telemetry and management experience, graph databases, AI/ML platform infrastructure, regulated-environment experience, and open-source or technical-writing contributions.

Benefits

Onsite role in Santa Clara, California, with up to 15% domestic or international travel.
Base salary range of $212,000–$265,000 USD, plus bonus and equity.
Medical, dental, and vision plans; matching 401(k); unlimited PTO; and paid holidays.
Parental and adoption leave, legal insurance, and a home technology stipend.

Salary: $212k - $265k/yr

IonQ

IonQ, Inc. [NYSE: IONQ] is the world’s leading quantum platform and foundry - delivering integrated quantum solutions across computing, networking, sensing, and security. IonQ’s newest generation of quantum computers, the forthcoming IonQ Tempo, will be the latest in a line of cutting-edge system...

Similar positions

Software Engineer, CDP - Stablecoin

Coinbase
Full time

USA
10/02/2026
Salary: $152k - $179k/yr

Remote

Go (Golang) Software Engineer

Canonical
Full time

Remote
10/02/2026

APAC

Senior Backend Engineer - Alerting | Spain

Grafana Labs
Full time

Remote
10/02/2026
Salary: €83k-€100k

Spain

Senior Staff Distributed Systems Engineer

IonQ
Full time

USA
10/02/2026
Salary: $216k - $283k/yr

Santa Clara, CA

Senior Backend Engineer - Alerting | Sweden

Grafana Labs
Full time

Remote
10/02/2026
Salary: kr 775k-kr 931k

Sweden