Senior Software Engineer - Systems and Infrastructure at LinkedIn
Mountain View, CA
$144,000–$236,000from the description
Jul 1, 2026
Mountain View, CA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A software engineering role focused on building and maintaining large-scale distributed infrastructure — including data storage, streaming, and analytics platforms — that underpins product and AI-driven experiences at scale. Day-to-day work involves designing and optimizing distributed systems, improving observability and developer tooling, debugging production issues, and contributing to open-source projects such as Apache Iceberg, Flink, and Airflow. Suits engineers with a solid background in distributed systems and backend development.
Mid level · 2+ years · San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA · Bachelor's required · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
Posted 4 times — it's one opening, so apply once.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 7,900 people in the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 6,000–10,300
Applicant volume Heavy — This req sits in a large pool with little in its requirements to thin it, and auto-apply tools fire at everything in the occupation. Applying early and leading with the rare skills below is what gets read.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $190,744 (middle half $167,095–$224,501). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (6)
The minimum gate is 2+ years of experience and a BA/BS (or equivalent practical experience). The preferred qualifications describe a more senior profile (5+ years with BS, 4+ with MS, 2+ with PhD), but these are explicitly labeled 'Preferred' and do not raise the hard floor.
The degree requirement states 'BA/BS … or related practical experience,' which normally would map to None (equivalent experience accepted). However, the Basic Qualifications section frames the degree as the primary credential with experience as an alternative only for the degree itself — the 2+ years of industry experience is a separate, additional hard gate. Degree is marked Bachelors as the stated minimum formal credential.
The role is hybrid (not fully remote), based at a LinkedIn office. The San Francisco Bay Area CBSA is used as LinkedIn's primary campus is in Sunnyvale/Mountain View, CA, which falls within the broader Bay Area metro.
The programming language requirement lists Java, C++, Python, Go, Rust, C#, Scala as interchangeable options — emitted as one skill with alternatives.
All technology stack items (GCP, S3/Azure, Iceberg, Spark, Flink, Trino, Airflow, Kubernetes, GraphQL, gRPC, Kafka, Pinot, ClickHouse, Cassandra) appear only under 'Preferred Qualifications' and are marked accordingly.
The role spans data infrastructure, storage, streaming, and platform engineering — a genuine ambiguity between Software Developers (15-1252) and Database/Data Architects (15-1243). The primary framing is software engineering of foundational systems, so 15-1252 is the primary code, with 15-1243 as the runner-up.
Read the full posting
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