Software Engineer New Grad - Data Infrastructure

About Quora

Quora's mission is to grow the world's collective intelligence. To do so, we have two platforms:

Quora: a global knowledge sharing platform with over 300M monthly unique visitors, bringing people together to share insights on various topics and providing a unique platform to learn and connect with others. Poe: a platform providing millions of global users with one place to chat, explore and build with a wide variety of AI language models (bots), including GPT-5.2, Claude Opus 4.5, Grok 4.1, Veo 3.1, Nano Banana Pro (Gemini 3 Pro Image), and more. As AI capabilities rapidly advance, Poe provides a single platform to instantly integrate and utilize these new models. Behind these products are passionate, collaborative, and high-performing global teams. We have a culture rooted in transparency, idea-sharing, and experimentation that allows us to celebrate success and grow together through meaningful work. Join us on this journey to create a positive impact and make a significant change in the world. This role will be working on our Quora product.

About the Team and Role

Our small data infrastructure team owns everything data—the data lake, pipelines, query engines, A/B testing infrastructure, dashboards, and visualization tools. We run on open source technologies like Kafka, Iceberg, Trino, Spark, and Airflow, alongside a few systems we've built in-house, our main programming language is Python.

No previous data infrastructure experience required for this role. You'll go through a mentorship program and hands-on technical training, working on meaningful projects across our stack from day one. We're looking for someone curious about large-scale infra and excited by the chance to improve the reliability of critical services, to drive significant cost and performance wins and to boost productivity improving dev tools used across the company.

Discover Our Team's Exciting Projects!

• 🚀 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 team’s 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 oncall 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

At Quora, we value diversity and inclusivity and welcome individuals from all backgrounds, including marginalized or underrepresented groups in tech, to apply for our job openings. We encourage all candidates who share a passion for growing the world’s knowledge, even those who may not strictly meet all the preferred requirements, to apply, as we know that a diverse range of perspectives can have a significant impact on our products and our culture. We are accepting applications on an ongoing basis. This role is a backfill for an existing vacancy. Quora offers a wide range of benefits including medical/dental/vision coverage, equity refreshers, remote work reimbursement, paid time off, employee assistance programs, and more. Benefits are country-specific and may vary. There are many factors that will determine the starting pay, including but not limited to experience, location, education, and business needs. US candidates only: For US based applicants, the salary range is $97,600 - $139,00 USD + equity + benefits. Canada candidates only: For Toronto and Vancouver based applicants, the salary range is $126,039 - $143,602 CAD + equity + benefits. For all other locations in Canada, the salary range is $117,636 - $134,028 CAD + equity + benefits. We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. AI technology may assist in sorting applications and recording interview notes, but all decisions are made by a member of our team. To ensure a secure hiring process, all final candidates will undergo identity verification and a comprehensive background check prior to onboarding. Job Applicant Privacy Notice: https://www.careers.quora.com/pages/quora-global-job-applicant-privacy-notice

Key skills/competency

• Data Infrastructure
• Distributed Systems
• Python
• SQL
• Kafka
• Iceberg
• Trino
• Spark
• Airflow
• Scalability
• Cost Optimization