Staff Software Engineer - Semantic Layer

dbt Labs is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to join the Semantic Layer team. The team owns the systems that turn dbt models into trusted, reusable business metrics. The successful candidate will be a core contributor to MetricFlow, designing features, optimizing query generation, and hardening the open-source codebase.

Responsibilities:

• Design, build, and maintain core features of MetricFlow
• Own MetricFlow as an open-source project
• Collaborate with engineers across dbt Cloud, dbt Core, and the Semantic Layer service
• Improve performance, reliability, and observability of metric query execution at scale
• Partner with product, design, and developer-relations teammates to translate customer and community feedback into shipped improvements
• Write clear technical documentation, RFCs, and design docs
• Mentor other engineers through code review, pairing, and technical guidance

Requirements:

• Strong professional software engineering experience
• Deep proficiency in Python
• Strong SQL fundamentals
• Experience designing systems that involve parsing, compilation, or transformation
• Solid grasp of software design principles
• Excellent written and verbal communication
• Experience collaborating in a distributed, asynchronous team environment

Nice to Have:

• Prior experience contributing to or maintaining a popular open-source project
• Familiarity with dbt, MetricFlow, LookML, Cube, or other semantic-layer technologies
• Background in data warehousing internals, query optimization, or analytical SQL dialects
• Experience with CI/CD, GitHub Actions, and release engineering for Python libraries
• Exposure to building developer-facing APIs, SDKs, or CLIs

Why Join Us:

• Impact at scale
• Open-source ownership
• A team that values craft
• Competitive compensation