Systems Engineer (C / WASM)
| Salary | €80,000 - €110,000 |
| Equity | 0.1% |
| Location | Remote, CET +- 2 hours. Occasional on-sites in Europe. |
| Deadline | 3rd April 2024 |
Description
We're looking for an experienced systems engineer to join our core team to help build out and optimise PGLite and WASM SQLite.
ElectricSQL is an open source platform for building local-first software. We sync data between Postgres in the cloud and an embedded local database in the client (web browser, mobile or desktop app).
Your job will be to optimise our local embedded databases.
PGLite is our WASM build of Postgres. Unlike previous "Postgres in the browser" projects, PGlite does not use a Linux virtual machine. It is simply Postgres in WASM, with an adapted fork of the Postgres source code, compiled using Emscripten.
We have a roadmap of feature, reliability and performance improvements we want to make to PGlite that we would like you to lead on, including:
- improving the compilation of PGLite, optimising bundle size
- compiling extensions, including pgvector, PostGIS and PL/pgSQL
- creating an embeddable C library version using similar techniques to the WASM build
- abstracting the changes to our Postgres fork to work across the C and WASM builds (in a way that makes it easy to track upstream changes)
- optimising the way we use and interface with Postgres from the client environments
We also support SQLite as the local database, through various drivers and storage adapters. For example, in the browser, this means wa-sqlite with IndexedDB and OPFS virtual filesystems. Your role will also involve understanding these drivers and adapters and, where necessary, developing, configuring, fixing and optimising them.
Requirements
You need to have experience of working with WASM compilation. You should have some experience of working with C. And you should be very familiar with standard systems-level work like compilers, build tools, cross compilation, linking, etc.
If you have specific experience with Emscripten and / or the Postgres source code that would be ideal. And it would be helpful if you have experience of maintaining open source projects and enjoy collaborating on open source development.
Ideally you're also motivated by the principles of local-first software and the opportunity to push the cutting-edge of what's possible with client-side databases, especially in the browser.
Next steps
See the jobs page for more information about working at Electric. Apply for the job using the application form linked below:
Applications close at 12 noon CET on the 3rd April 2024.