PlanetScale is growing rapidly and reinventing the transactional database market. The PlanetScale platform offers both Postgres and Vitess clusters. Vitess, an open-source database clustering system for horizontal scaling of MySQL, enables businesses to efficiently handle large-scale data workloads — without sacrificing developer experience.

PlanetScale is backed with over $100M in venture financing from top-tier VCs including a16z, Kleiner Perkins, SignalFire, and Insight Venture Partners. And we serve some of the most innovative companies in the world such as Block, Anysphere (Cursor), MyFitnessPal, Etsy, Kick, and thousands more. Our customers entrust us with what is often their most precious digital asset, their data, so the stakes couldn't be higher. We're looking for early members of our Sales team that can form deep partnerships with our prospects and customers to help them adopt and succeed on the next generation of database infrastructure.

What's the job to be done?

• Partner with Sales and Customer Engineering throughout the pre-sales and post-sales journey as the technical expert helping customers solve their most challenging database problems.
• Lead technical discovery to match customers’ business and technical objectives with PlanetScale’s offerings.
• Design and execute proof of value timelines that deliver on agreed upon business outcomes and success criteria. 
• Design database migration strategies and work hands-on with customers to execute migrations to PlanetScale's PostgreSQL and Vitess platforms.
• Assess workloads, analyze performance requirements, and recommend architecture, sizing, and optimization strategies.
• Build tools, scripts, and automation that accelerate migrations and improve customer onboarding.
• Create educational content including documentation, guides, blog posts, workshops, and videos.
• Collaborate with Product and Engineering teams to advocate for customer needs and shape the platform.

These attributes best describe you…

• You have deep expertise in database systems including replication, high availability, sharding, performance tuning, and migration strategies.
• You're equally comfortable presenting architecture designs to executives and writing scripts to automate migration tasks.
• You thrive in customer-facing situations and translate technical concepts into business value for diverse audiences.
• You're self-motivated and can manage multiple engagements simultaneously with minimal oversight.
• You enjoy creating content and sharing knowledge through various formats.
• You're comfortable with occasional travel (less than 20%).

What you will need

• 5+ years of hands-on experience with MySQL or PostgreSQL in production, including operations, performance tuning, and troubleshooting OR
• 5+ years of experience supporting customers with MySQL or PostgreSQL workloads where you advised on operations, performance tuning, and troubleshooting
• Experience working with at least one major cloud provider (AWS, GCP, Azure, or OCI)
• Proven success in customer-facing technical roles such as Solutions Architect, Sales Engineer, or Technical Account Manager
• Strong understanding of database migration strategies and tooling
• Experience evaluating database solutions including architecture reviews, capacity planning, and performance analysis
• Ability to write scripts and tools in Python, Go, or JavaScript
• Experience creating technical content such as documentation, tutorials, or blog posts

What else will help you be successful

• Experience with AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) or logical replication tools
• Knowledge of Vitess, database sharding, or distributed database systems
• Familiarity with Kubernetes and cloud-native architectures
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform or CloudFormation
• Contributions to open-source projects or active participation in database communities
• Public speaking experience at conferences or meetups

Why PlanetScale

We're redefining how high-growth companies manage data at scale—and we work with some of the most exciting brands in gaming, consumer tech, and B2B SaaS. As a Solutions Engineer, you'll guide customers through transformational database migrations and help them unlock the full power of PlanetScale's platform.

PlanetScale is a profitable company with a philosophy centered around building small teams of p99 individuals and is recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in America.

At PlanetScale we believe in supporting people to do their best work and thrive no matter the location. Our mission is to build a diverse, equitable, and inclusive company. We strive to build an inclusive environment where all people feel that they are equally respected and valued, whether they are a candidate or an employee. We welcome applicants of any educational background, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, age, citizenship, socioeconomic status, disability, pregnancy status, and veteran status.

If you have a disability, please let us know if there's any way we can make the interview process better for you; we're happy to accommodate!

Total Compensation and Pay Transparency

An employee's total compensation consists of base salary + variable comp where appropriate + benefits + equity. A member of our Talent Acquisition team will be happy to answer any further questions when we engage with you to begin the interview process.

Base salary range: $160,000 - $250,000 USD

PlanetScale is growing rapidly and reinventing the database space. The PlanetScale platform offers both Postgres and Vitess clusters. Vitess, an open-source database clustering system for horizontal scaling of MySQL, enables businesses to efficiently handle large-scale data workloads — without sacrificing developer experience.

Our customers entrust us with what is often their most precious digital asset, their data, so the stakes couldn't be higher. We're looking for a Software Engineer to join our core engineering team and help us build the next generation of database infrastructure.

What's the job to be done?

• You will advise and handle support requests from enterprise customers on the PlanetScale platform.
• You will become a customer-facing subject-matter expert for enterprise customers on the PlanetScale platform.
• You will identify product gaps in a customer-specific context and work with Technical Account Management, Engineering and Sales Engineering teams to prioritize and escalate them.
• You will be part of an on call rotation for high priority issues.

These attributes best describe you…

• You are comfortable in front of customers, empathetic but understanding when to push back to help customers become successful on their own.
• You have excellent debugging and troubleshooting skills; with a mix of enough experience and intuition to zero in on root-causes for bugs that can leave others stumped.
• You are comfortable stepping outside your comfort zone. Be it delving into unfamiliar code in Vitess, one of its dependencies, or a random MySQL connector, written in a language you may not know (yet!). Working with code as your main source of documentation doesn't fluster you, and you are happy to help add/correct it as necessary where it may be inaccurate.
• You can operate independently, but you know when you are in too deep and need to ask for help.
• You know how to work under pressure in times of urgency. We and our customers both take issues with their data platform seriously.

What you will need

• Experience supporting production databases and applications, preferably at scale.
• Experience with database internals and peformance tuning, specifically for PostgreSQL and MySQL databases
• Working knowledge of Kubernetes.
• Strong ability to communicate and deal directly with customers, whether in email, Slack, video conference, or in person.

What else will help you be successful

• Knowledge of common application deployment platforms and frameworks. Eg Python, Go, Node, PHP
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure)
• Knowledge of monitoring, observability, and debugging tools
• Contributions to open-source projects, especially in the database or infrastructure space

Why PlanetScale

We're redefining how high-growth companies manage data at scale—and we work with some of the most exciting brands in gaming, consumer tech, and B2B SaaS. As a Software Engineer, you'll be at the core of building the platform that powers world-class apps used by hundreds of millions of users worldwide. PlanetScale is a profitable company with a philosophy centered around building small teams of p99 individuals and is recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in America.

At PlanetScale we believe in supporting people to do their best work and thrive no matter the location. Our mission is to build a diverse, equitable, and inclusive company. We strive to build an inclusive environment where all people feel that they are equally respected and valued, whether they are a candidate or an employee. We welcome applicants of any educational background, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, age, citizenship, socioeconomic status, disability, pregnancy status, and veteran status.

If you have a disability, please let us know if there's any way we can make the interview process better for you; we're happy to accommodate!

Total Compensation and Pay Transparency

An employee's total compensation consists of base salary + variable comp where appropriate + benefits + equity. A member of our Talent Acquisition team will be happy to answer any further questions when we engage with you to begin the interview process.

Salary range: US $120,000 - $200,000

PlanetScale is growing rapidly and reinventing the database space. The PlanetScale platform offers both Postgres and Vitess clusters. Vitess, an open-source database clustering system for horizontal scaling of MySQL, enables businesses to efficiently handle large-scale data workloads — without sacrificing developer experience.

Our customers entrust us with what is often their most precious digital asset, their data, so the stakes couldn't be higher. We're looking for a Software Engineer to join our core engineering team and help us build the next generation of database infrastructure.

What's the job to be done?

• You will design and build critical systems that power PlanetScale's database platform, serving millions of queries per second for some of the world's largest applications.
• You will collaborate with a team of expert engineers to solve complex distributed systems challenges.
• You will work independently to solve engineering and business problems with little direction and high autonomy.
• You will work directly with customers to understand their needs and translate them into robust technical solutions.

These attributes best describe you…

• You are passionate about building high-quality, scalable systems and take pride in writing clean, maintainable code.
• You have strong experience with distributed systems, databases, and performance optimization.
• You are comfortable working with large codebases and can quickly understand and contribute to complex systems.
• You thrive in a collaborative environment and enjoy mentoring junior engineers.
• You have excellent problem-solving skills and can debug complex issues across multiple systems.
• You are self-motivated and can work independently with minimal guidance while making sound technical decisions.

What you will need

• 5+ years of software engineering experience with a focus on backend systems
• Strong proficiency in Go, with experience in other languages like Python, Java, or C++
• Experience with MySQL or other relational databases
• Working knowledge of Kubernetes and containerized applications
• Experience building and operating distributed systems at scale

What else will help you be successful

• Experience with database internals, query optimization, or distributed consensus algorithms
• Contributions to open-source projects, especially in the database or infrastructure space
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure)
• Knowledge of monitoring, observability, and debugging tools
• Previous experience at a high-growth technology company

Why PlanetScale

We're redefining how high-growth companies manage data at scale—and we work with some of the most exciting brands in gaming, consumer tech, and B2B SaaS. As a Software Engineer, you'll be at the core of building the platform that powers world-class apps used by hundreds of millions of users worldwide. PlanetScale is a profitable company with a philosophy centered around building small teams of p99 individuals and is recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in America.

At PlanetScale we believe in supporting people to do their best work and thrive no matter the location. Our mission is to build a diverse, equitable, and inclusive company. We strive to build an inclusive environment where all people feel that they are equally respected and valued, whether they are a candidate or an employee. We welcome applicants of any educational background, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, age, citizenship, socioeconomic status, disability, pregnancy status, and veteran status.

If you have a disability, please let us know if there's any way we can make the interview process better for you; we're happy to accommodate!

Total Compensation and Pay Transparency

An employee's total compensation consists of base salary + variable comp where appropriate + benefits + equity. A member of our Talent Acquisition team will be happy to answer any further questions when we engage with you to begin the interview process.

Base salary range: $120,000 - $290,000 USD