Compiler Engineer + SCIP Maintainer [IC4-5]

About this role

Lead the evolution of SCIP, an open-source protocol for code indexing, as a senior compiler engineer and open-source steward at Sourcegraph. Balance deep technical work on protocol design and indexer quality with community leadership across organizations like Meta, Uber, and Mozilla that depend on the standard in production.

What you'll do

• Maintain and evolve the SCIP protocol, making architectural decisions that require strong compiler and language expertise
• Govern the SCIP community: triage issues, set contribution guidelines, manage roadmap, and coordinate across external partner organizations
• Review and mentor contributions from indexer maintainers and community members across multiple languages
• Deepen partnerships with major organizations (Meta, Uber, Mozilla, Stripe) that run SCIP indexers in production
• Shape Sourcegraph's product direction for code intelligence and AI agent grounding
• Participate in on-call support for SCIP toolchain and ecosystem health

What they're looking for

• Compiler design and implementation
• Programming language semantics and AST manipulation
• Open-source project governance and community management
• Symbol resolution and code indexing
• Technical leadership and mentorship
• Multi-stakeholder alignment and communication
• Systems thinking about protocol design and backwards compatibility
• AI/ML applications to code intelligence

Benefits

• Remote work with flexibility across timezones (EST overlap required)
• Senior/Staff-level IC role (IC4-5) with significant technical autonomy
• Small, high-leverage team with wide surface area and real agency
• Opportunity to shape industry standards and influence major tech companies
• AI-forward culture focused on next-generation code intelligence

Likely interview questions

• Walk us through a complex compiler or language feature you've implemented—what tradeoffs did you make and why?
• How would you approach deciding whether a proposed change to the SCIP protocol is worth the coordination cost across multiple organizations?