This listing does not state pay. Across 475 open software engineer listings that state pay, the middle half runs $159,500 to $238,500 and the median is $197,500.

Listed pay is what employers advertise, not what people are paid.

Software Engineer salaries by state · Check your own pay

How AI is used in this kind of work

Among software developers, AI is already used for some of the tasks. Measured exposure for software developers: 29% (some).

Share of this job’s tasks that AI is already used for at work, from real usage. It is not a forecast of job loss, and a low number means no use seen yet. Source: Anthropic Economic Index.

Check how this applies to your own job

Skills this job asks for

Say which you have and which you want to build. We use it to match you to jobs like this one.

About the job

PlanetScale is growing rapidly and reinventing the database space. The PlanetScale platform offers both PostgreSQL and Vitess clusters. Vitess is an open-source database clustering system for horizontal scaling of MySQL that enables businesses to efficiently handle large-scale data workloads — without sacrificing developer experience. We're bringing the same scaling power to PostgreSQL with Neki, our sharded PostgreSQL product.

We're hiring a software engineer to build the internal tools that run PlanetScale. You'll automate the manual work that slows a growing company down: incident response, on-call, support workflows, onboarding, and the dozens of other small things that take up our time.

Location

This role is in-office only at our San Francisco headquarters. You must already live in the SF Bay Area and be able to work from the office most days.

This is not a remote role. We do not offer relocation. We do not sponsor visas.

If you need to relocate, work remotely, or need visa sponsorship, please do not apply.

What You'll Do

Build AI-enabled tools and agents that automate manual work across engineering, support, and operations

Write bots and integrations for Slack, PagerDuty, and the other systems we run the business on

Build internal dashboards that give the team visibility into what's actually happening

Integrate LLM APIs and AI coding tools directly into the internal systems you build

Ship small, useful things fast. Iterate based on what people need

Work directly with senior engineers and leadership to find friction and fix it

Own your projects end to end: design, build, ship, support

For example, you might:

Automate our incident response process

Build automations for customer support

Build internal dashboards that measure our service quality

What We're Looking For

Required:

0-2 years of professional software engineering experience, or equivalent project or internship work

Solid fundamentals in at least one of TypeScript, Ruby, or Go

Comfortable building with AI coding tools and LLM APIs. This role is AI-enabled work, not just AI-assisted

Comfort writing scripts, small services, or automations that solve a real problem

Clear written communication

Already based in the San Francisco Bay Area. We do not relocate for this role.

In-office at our San Francisco headquarters most days. This is not remote.

Authorized to work in the US without sponsorship. We cannot sponsor visas.

Nice to Have:

Experience with Slack's API, GitHub Actions, or similar automation platforms

Exposure to Terraform or Kubernetes

A side project, bot, or tool you built to automate something in your own life

About You

You fix the annoying thing to save time. You'd rather ship something small this week than plan something big for next quarter. You ask good questions, take feedback well, and want to learn from engineers more senior than you. You want to be in the room with your team, not on a call. You're excited about AI tools not just to write code faster, but to design and ship whole systems.

Why PlanetScale

We're redefining how high-growth companies manage data at scale—and we work with some of the most exciting brands in gaming, consumer tech, and B2B SaaS. As a Software Engineer, you'll be at the core of building the platform that powers world-class apps used by hundreds of millions of users worldwide. PlanetScale is a profitable company with a philosophy centered around building small teams of p99 individuals and is recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in America.

At PlanetScale we believe in supporting people to do their best work. Our mission is to build a diverse, equitable, and inclusive company. We strive to build an inclusive environment where all people feel that they are equally respected and valued, whether they are a candidate or an employee. We welcome applicants of any educational background, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, age, citizenship, socioeconomic status, disability, pregnancy status, and veteran status.

If you have a disability, please let us know if there's any way we can make the interview process better for you; we're happy to accommodate!

Total Compensation and Pay Transparency

An employee's total compensation consists of base salary + variable comp where appropriate + benefits + equity. A member of our Talent Acquisition team will be happy to answer any further questions when we engage with you to begin the interview process.

Base salary range: $120,000 - $160,000 USD