New Grad Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure
Quora
Job Overview
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Job Description
About Quora
Quora is a privately held, "remote-first" company dedicated to growing the world's collective intelligence. We operate two main platforms:
- Quora: A global knowledge sharing platform with over 300M monthly unique visitors, connecting people to share insights and learn.
- Poe: A platform providing millions of global users with a single place to chat, explore, and build with various AI language models like GPT-5.2, Claude Opus 4.5, Grok 4.1, and more. Poe integrates new AI models instantly as capabilities advance.
Behind these products are passionate, collaborative, and high-performing global teams. Our culture is rooted in transparency, idea-sharing, and experimentation, fostering success and growth through meaningful work. This New Grad Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure role will focus on the Quora product.
About The Team And Role
The small data infrastructure team at Quora owns everything data-related: the data lake, pipelines, query engines, A/B testing infrastructure, dashboards, and visualization tools. We utilize open-source technologies such as Kafka, Iceberg, Trino, Spark, and Airflow, alongside some in-house systems. Our primary programming language is Python.
No prior data infrastructure experience is required for this New Grad Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure role. You will benefit from a robust mentorship program and hands-on technical training, working on meaningful projects across our stack from day one.
We are seeking a curious individual passionate about large-scale infrastructure, eager to improve critical service reliability, drive significant cost and performance optimizations, and boost productivity by enhancing developer tools used company-wide.
🌟 Discover Our Team's Exciting Projects! 🌟
Join us on a journey through some of our standout achievements that showcase innovation and collaboration at Quora:
- 🚀 Migrating a Decade of Redshift Usages to Trino at Quora: Dive into how we transformed our data ecosystem, enhancing efficiency and performance!
- ⚡ Revamping the Spark Ecosystem at Quora: Explore our efforts to elevate Spark, our main engine for data processing, making it more powerful and user-friendly for our engineering teams!
- 🎥 Adopting Trino's Fault-tolerant Execution Mode at Trino Summit 2023: Catch the highlights from our presentation at the Trino Summit, where we shared insights on building resilience in data processing!
Get inspired by the impact we're making, and imagine the possibilities for your own journey with us!
Responsibilities
- Help implement scalable and efficient data architectures, meeting data needs from data scientists, engineers, and business partners.
- Actively participate in the team’s planning process, discussing priorities and proposing project ideas as you grow your knowledge and ownership in data-infra systems.
- Identify and implement improvements to system’s cost efficiency, reducing data storage and processing costs.
- Participate in the team’s on-call rotation, helping solve timely reliability incidents.
Minimum Requirements
- Availability for meetings and impromptu communication during Quora's “coordination hours" (Mon-Fri: 9am-3pm Pacific Time).
- A 2025 or 2026 graduate with or pursuing a B.S., M.S., or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
- Interest in scalability challenges and infrastructure technologies.
- A passion for learning, always improving yourself and the team around you.
Preferred Requirements
- Previous software engineering experience via an internship, work experience, or coding competition.
- Passion for Quora's mission and goals.
- Knowledge of Python and SQL.
Additional Information
Quora values diversity and inclusivity and encourages applications from all backgrounds. We offer a wide range of benefits including medical/dental/vision coverage, equity refreshers, remote work reimbursement, and paid time off. Benefits are country-specific and may vary. We are an equal opportunity employer.
For US-based applicants, the salary range is $97,600 - $139,00 USD + equity + benefits. For Canada-based applicants (Toronto and Vancouver), the salary range is $126,039 - $143,602 CAD + equity + benefits. For other Canadian locations, the salary range is $117,636 - $134,028 CAD + equity + benefits.
Key skills/competency
- Data Infrastructure
- Scalable Systems
- Distributed Systems
- Data Pipelines
- Apache Kafka
- Apache Iceberg
- Trino (PrestoSQL)
- Apache Spark
- Apache Airflow
- Python Programming
- SQL
- System Reliability
- Cost Optimization
- A/B Testing
- Cloud Technologies
- Problem Solving
- Team Collaboration
- Mentorship
- New Grad
- Software Engineering
How to Get Hired at Quora
- Research Quora's culture: Study their mission, values, recent news, and employee testimonials on LinkedIn and Glassdoor. Focus on their 'remote-first' approach and commitment to collective intelligence.
- Tailor your resume for data infrastructure: Highlight relevant coursework, projects, internships, and any experience with distributed systems, data processing, or large-scale backend services. Emphasize Python and SQL skills.
- Showcase your passion for Quora's mission: During interviews, articulate why you are drawn to Quora's goal of growing collective intelligence and how your skills align with building their data platforms.
- Prepare for technical challenges: Expect questions on data structures, algorithms, system design fundamentals, and how to approach scalability and reliability in a data context. Brush up on Python and SQL.
- Demonstrate problem-solving and curiosity: Emphasize instances where you've learned new technologies quickly or tackled complex problems, especially those related to efficiency, performance, or distributed systems.
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