PGlite Engineer

Basis	Contract or full time
Salary	Flexible, depends on basis, full-time ~€80-100k
Location	Remote in Europe or eastern US
Sponsored	Sponsored and co-funded by Supabase
Published	1st October 2024
Deadline	21st October 2024

We're looking for a generalist web and systems engineer to join the core PGlite team at ElectricSQL, working mainly in Typescript, Rust and C++.

PGlite is a lightweight embeddable/WASM Postgres. It's a fast growing open source project, with 8k GitHub stars and over 200k weekly downloads. It opens up new possibilities for local-first apps and systems built on an embedded, real-time, reactive Postgres, such as https://database.build

You'll work as part of the PGlite team at ElectricSQL, with Sam Willis and Paul Peny. We work remote-first, with ~quartely on-sites in Europe. You must be based in Europe or eastern USA. See the Jobs and Team pages for more information about working at Electric and to see the team you'll be joining.

Flexible basis, sponsored by Supabase

The role is co-funded by Supabase and provides an opportunity to work in collaboration with members of the Supabase team, including Greg Richardson (the guy in the video above!), as well as other partners and contributors from the open source community.

It's offered on a flexible basis, so could be a short term contract, long term contract or direct employment, full-time or part-time. Remuneration depends on your circumstances and how you prefer to structure the engagement. As a guide, ElectricSQL works a 4-day week, with a full-time salary for 32 hours a week in the €80-100k range.

You need great communication skills and ideally experience of building open source. Technically, you need strong Typescript and systems programming experience, ideally in C++ and Rust. It would be great if (but is not essential that) you're familiar with some aspects of database internals, filesystems and WASM.

Current priorities include developing a libpglite version of PGlite that can be embedded in native apps, creating an HTTP/S3 VFS, multi-connection, robustness and stability improvements. Example tasks that you might pick up include things like:

• write a HTTP VFS for PGlite (in Typescript) that allows an instance to load a database from a HTTP or S3 end point, using HTTP range requests
• improve the OPFS VFS so that it works in Safari, this probably involves creating a mini-filesystem (using b-trees) that maps multiple files to a single file
• fix bugs in PGlite - could be anything from JS/TS bugs to chasing down obscure issues caused by Postgres being compiled to WASM
• help to port Postgres extensions that are written in c++ (e.g.: pg_duck) or Rust (e.g.: pg_search) to PGlite
• create a Postgres extension that allows you to call Javascript functions from Postgres triggers
• investigate and build out support for PGlite on various serverless/edge platforms (Cloudflare, Fastly), would involve building VFSs backed by object stores and optimising the WASM build for restricted environments
• document how to build Postgres extensions for PGlite for common languages like C, C++ and Rust

It's a core role at a fast moving project, so priorities evolve quickly. It's essential that you're self-directed and can be productive in a small team environment.

You need to be able to write your own requirement docs and move between research and implementation with the right balance of planning and velocity. You also need to write public docs and help debug and fix issues, so that developers and collaborators can be successful using and building PGlite.

How to apply

Apply using the form linked below:

View application form

The first step is a 45 minute call. After that, the process is personalised but we strive to keep it as efficient as possible and move swiftly to an offer.