Principal Software Engineer - Postgres

The most senior of ClickHouse's remote India Postgres roles, and the one closest to the metal. The company is building next generation database infrastructure and wants someone who can work inside Postgres itself: storage, replication, query execution and performance optimisation, plus prototyping extensions that push Postgres capabilities into cloud native territory. You would set architectural direction, profile and optimise using low level instrumentation and benchmarking, and mentor senior engineers rather than juniors. Apply if you have spent a decade or more writing systems software in C, C++ or Rust and genuinely know a database engine's internals, whether that is PostgreSQL or another. Open source database contributions are called out as highly desirable, so a public track record helps a lot here. Remote in India.

Required by the posting: 10+ years building systems software in C/C++ or Rust, with Go experience noted as a plus. Deep knowledge of PostgreSQL or other database engine internals, specifically storage, execution or replication subsystems. Strong understanding of concurrency, operating systems and performance engineering. A proven record of shipping large scale systems or core infrastructure features end to end. The posting adds two temperament requirements: a pragmatic problem solver with a bias for simplicity and measurable impact, and someone who thrives in a high autonomy, high velocity environment.

Highly desirable rather than mandatory: experience contributing to open source databases or comparable complex systems. Given that ClickHouse itself is open source with more than 42,000 GitHub stars, a visible contribution history is worth more here than at a closed source employer.

The real day to day: leading design and implementation across storage, replication, query execution and performance; contributing to and extending Postgres internals; prototyping extensions that integrate with cloud native infrastructure; profiling with low level instrumentation and benchmarking; setting engineering standards; and driving projects from concept to production with significant autonomy.

Location and working pattern: India (remote). ClickHouse is a globally distributed company operating in over 20 countries with a home office allowance for remote staff. The same role is also posted for the Netherlands and the United States; this is the India requisition.

Honest fit guidance: this is a genuine principal level job, not a senior job with an inflated title. The team is described as small and high talent, and the role expects you to work independently across complex areas and mentor other senior engineers. If your ten years are in application development rather than systems or database internals, the years bar will not carry you. If you have engine level work to point at, it will.