What are the responsibilities and job description for the Software Engineer, Frontend position at Sift?
At Sift, we’re redefining how modern machines are built, tested, and operated. Our platform gives engineers real-time observability over high-frequency telemetry—eliminating bottlenecks and enabling faster, more reliable development.
Sift was born from our work at SpaceX on Dragon, Falcon, Starlink, and Starship—where scaling telemetry, debugging flight systems, and ensuring mission reliability demanded new infrastructure. Founded by a team from SpaceX, Google, and Palantir, Sift is built for mission-critical systems where precision and scalability are non-negotiable.
As an early engineer at Sift, you won’t just write code—you’ll help define the architecture, shape the product, and influence the culture of a company focused on solving real engineering problems. If you’re looking for complex technical challenges and the opportunity to build foundational systems supporting complex machines from the ground up, we want to hear from you.
In This Role, You'll:
- Build high-performance data visualization interfaces and reusable component libraries for complex telemetry data
- Create intuitive user interfaces for data exploration while optimizing for large real-time datasets
- Collaborate with backend teams on API design and implementation for seamless user experiences
- Write clean, maintainable code and participate in technical design discussions
The Skillset You'll Bring:
- 3 years of professional experience building web applications and data-driven tools
- Strong experience building production applications with technologies like React, NextJS, and TypeScript
- Strong understanding of web performance optimization and browser rendering
- Experience with modern CSS (Tailwind) and component libraries (Radix UI) for building design systems
Bonus Points:
- Experience with technical visualization tools (WebGL, D3.js, Apache ECharts) and time-series data
- Knowledge of WebAssembly and browser-based computation
- Background in scientific computing or technical data visualization
- Experience building tools for technical users (dashboards, data-editing environments)
- Built and launched side projects with consistent usage traffic
Engineering At Sift:
You'll have the opportunity to help evolve and scale our platform because we're still in the early stages of building the product. Relevant technologies include:
- Web frontend & backend: React, TypeScript, Redux, Tailwind, WebAssembly, D3.js, WebGL, and Go
- Data: Parquet, Flink, Kafka, Redpanda, Beam, DuckDB, Timescale, QuestDB, InfluxDB, and Druid
- Infrastructure: GitHub Actions, AWS, Azure, GCP, Docker, Kubernetes, and Terraform
Location:
- The Sift team is based in El Segundo. We collaborate in person two times per week, Monday and Thursday. We work closely with hardware companies, many of which are based in LA, building everything from autonomous vehicles to spacecraft. As a customer-centric company, being nearby for site visits and collaboration is essential. Sift is open to relocating you to LA.
