Founding Engineer - Platform

About Colrows

Colrows is building a generative analytics platform designed to transform how enterprises work with data—making insights as easy to converse with as a colleague. We combine strong data foundations, agentic workflows, and enterprise-grade governance in a seamless, self-serve experience. At the heart of this is a powerful execution engine, and we’re looking for a Founding Engineer to help shape and scale it.

Role Overview

hands-on Principal Software Engineer

This is a high-impact role, central to Colrows’ success—working closely with the founder, product leaders, and customers.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and build core components of the Colrows platform, including:
• Distributed query execution
• Type-safe data transformation pipelines
• High-performance connectors and adapters to multiple database backends
• Architect and implement scalable, resilient services in

  Java

  , using open-source libraries and tools.
• Ensure correctness in data type mappings, memory representations, and serialization across diverse data systems.
• Lead and mentor engineers through reviews, design discussions, and production-quality implementation.
• Collaborate with AI, frontend, and infrastructure teams to build a cohesive, agentic product experience.
• Own technical decision-making—balancing performance, maintainability, and extensibility.

You Bring

• 10+ years of hands-on backend engineering experience with a focus on

  Java

  .
• Strong foundation in

  computer science fundamentals

  —especially data structures, memory models, and type systems.
• Experience working with

  large datasets

  —terabytes of structured data across distributed systems.
• Practical knowledge of

  data type mappings

  across SQL engines, Java, JSON, Avro, Arrow, and binary formats.
• Fluency in

  in-memory data representations

  , caching strategies, and performance tuning.
• Proven track record of designing and implementing

  clean, testable, production-grade code

  .
• Familiarity with tools like:

  Apache Arrow, Apache Calcite, Apache Ignite, Presto/Trino, Apache Beam, RocksDB, Protobuf, gRPC, Netty

  .
• Bonus: Experience contributing to open source, or building data platforms, databases, or query engines.

What You'll Get

• Work on a next-gen analytics platform that's redefining how enterprises interact with data.
• Collaborate directly with the founder and a mission-driven, highly technical team.
• A strong culture of ownership, autonomy, and deep engineering.
• Competitive compensation, meaningful equity, and the flexibility of a modern remote/hybrid setup.