Staff Software Engineer_Fusion Adapters

About the Role

dbt Fusion is building the next generation of data execution and connectivity infrastructure, enabling dbt workloads to run efficiently across diverse compute engines and data platforms. As a Senior Engineer on the Fusion Adapters and Connectivity team, you’ll design and ship core abstractions powering how dbt communicates with execution systems — leveraging Rust, Go, Arrow, and emerging open standards. This is a rare opportunity to work at the intersection of systems programming, database internals, and high-visibility open-source development. Your work will shape a foundational platform leveraged across the dbt ecosystem and the broader data community.

What You’ll Do

• Design, build, and maintain Rust-first connectivity layers, execution APIs, and adapter scaffolding.
• Partner with teams building the dbt compiler, semantic layer, and runtime to evolve adapter interfaces and system boundaries.
• Contribute to Arrow/ADBC and other open-source specifications or implementations, strengthening the data ecosystem.
• Own CI, testing frameworks, profiling, error reporting surfaces, and release readiness for Fusion adapters.
• Debug complex interoperability and performance issues across drivers, engines, and compute domains.
• Collaborate with internal and community maintainers to review PRs, write RFCs, and evolve public code architectures.
• Mentor engineers on systems best practices and contribute to shared patterns around resilience, debuggability, and API clarity.

Skills We’re Looking For

• Strong programming background in Rust, Go, C++ or similar performance-oriented languages.
• Experience designing or maintaining SDKs, libraries, connectors, or compute/data integration codebases.
• Exposure to data warehouses, query engines, Arrow/columnar ecosystems, or execution runtimes.
• A desire to build foundational platform components that other teams and community members rely on.
• Comfort working in public code review loops, async-first communication, and collaborative RFC processes.
• A mindset grounded in debuggability, reliability, and ownership in ambiguous problem spaces.

You’ll have an edge if you have:

• Contributed to or interacted with Arrow, ADBC, DuckDB, Presto, DataFusion, Spark, ClickHouse, or similar engines.
• Experience shaping adapter/plugin standards, driver contracts, or architectural interfaces used by others.
• Familiarity with Rust async ecosystems (tokio, tower, tracing) or Go concurrency practices.
• Prior OSS governance experience — triaging issues, reviewing PRs, or working with community maintainers.
• An interest in building developer-experience layers or scaffolding frameworks for adapter authors.

Qualifications:

• 6+ years experience in software engineering, with strong systems-level skills.
• 2+ years working in open-source, SDK, runtime, or low-level integration environments.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science / related field or equivalent experience through industry OSS contributions.