Software Engineer, Superhuman Database Infrastructure

Software Engineer Superhuman offers a dynamic hybrid working model for this role. This flexible approach gives team members the best of both worlds: plenty of focus time along with in-person collaboration that helps foster trust, innovation, and a strong team culture. We're looking for a Software Engineer to join the Platform team within Superhuman Docs. This is an opportunity to work on and grow into a technical leadership role on the foundation that powers every table, grid, and view on the platform. Superhuman Docs is where teams build living documents that replace scattered tools with a single, flexible surface. At the heart of this experience is the table the building block that makes a doc feel like a real application. Tables aren't passive containers they support rich filtering, a diverse and extendable set of data types, multi-column sorts and groupings, external database sync, and relational dependencies. Every cell change flows through a distributed sync engine and must land consistent across every collaborator, view, and dependent formula. This problem is harder than building a general-purpose database because of who the users are. Our customers aren't database administrators — they're teams who opened a doc to build a tracker or CRM and ended up running a real application. That means managing an enormous number of distinct databases — most of which go cold over time but none of which we can delete — requiring cost-aware architectural choices. We have to support enterprise-grade encryption that the major cloud providers don't offer out of the box. We need a system that stays performant under access patterns that can shift at any moment — and invisible to customers who shouldn't have to think about any of it. Optimizing for a known workload is a solved problem. This isn't that. As an Engineer on this team, you will: Contribute to — and grow into technical leadership on — the structured data storage layer, including cell storage, row ordering, index management, view materialization, and query execution. Help drive improvements to how the platform handles large, complex tables at scale: lazy hydration strategies, data compaction, cache invalidation, and the lifecycle of cell data through the sync pipeline. Work on server-side query planning for database-backed tables — pushing filter, sort, and grouping operations closer to the data layer and away from the client. Collaborate with the formula engine and sync teams to ensure correctness at the boundaries: formula dependency tracking, column state transitions, and consistent view state across concurrent operations. Contribute to performance benchmarking and profiling practices for table operations, giving the team observable data to drive storage and query optimization decisions. Raise the technical bar across the team — reviewing designs, mentoring engineers, and bringing database internals thinking to problems the team is actively working through. Help define how structured data evolves on Superhuman Docs — anticipating the demands of cold storage tiers, per-tenant encryption at scale, unpredictable access patterns, and the flexibility requirements of a general-purpose application platform. We invite you to share your knowledge, experience, and goals with us to help us find the best team match for you. Tell us your superpower! Superhuman offers all team members competitive pay along with a benefits package encompassing the following and more: Excellent health care (including a wide range of medical, dental, vision, mental health, and fertility benefits) Disability and life insurance options 401(k) and RRSP matching Paid parental leave20 days of paid time off per year, 12 days of paid holidays per year, two floating holidays per year, and flexible sick time Generous stipends (including those for caregiving, pet care, wellness, your home office, and more) Annual professional development budget and opportunities Superhuman takes a market-based approach to compensation, so base pay may vary by location. Our US locations are categorized into two compensation zones based on proximity to our hub locations. For more information about our compensation zones and locations where we currently support employment, please refer to this page. If a location of interest is not listed, please speak with a recruiter for additional information. Base pay may vary considerably depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The expected salary ranges for this position are outlined by compensation zone and may be modified in the future. At Superhuman, we value our differences, and we encourage all—especially those whose identities are traditionally underrepresented in tech organizations—to apply. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, ancestry, national origin, citizenship, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, political belief, or any other characteristic protected by law. Superhuman is an equal opportunity employer and a participant in the US federal E-Verify program (US). We also abide by the Employment Equity Act (Canada).