Is Dropbox fully remote, or will I ever need to go to an office?

Remote is the primary way of working, but Dropbox keeps on-demand Studios and workspaces you can use at no cost, and teams typically gather in person for offsites of 2 to 3 days per quarter, with roughly 5 to 10% travel being typical. In-person time is intentional and community-focused rather than a return-to-office requirement.

What does async by default look like day to day?

You work a nonlinear schedule of your own design, anchored by core collaboration hours that overlap across time zones, and written asynchronous communication is preferred over meetings to protect focus time. Dropbox also publishes free 4-week courses on its careers site teaching best practices for thriving in distributed work.

How does Dropbox set pay for remote roles?

Pay is geo-based: salary ranges are published in job postings, segmented into three US zones plus country-level ranges for Canada, Poland, and Mexico. The zip code of your remote work location determines which metropolitan pay range applies.

Which benefits stand out for remote employees?

Highlights include a 100% 401(k) match up to $6,000 per year, a quarterly perks allowance usable for childcare, wellness, ergonomics, and learning, a $100 monthly gym and wellness reimbursement plus the Peloton Corporate Wellness Program, and up to $145 per month toward phone and internet. Parental leave runs up to 20 weeks for birthing parents and 12 weeks for non-birthing parents.

Do employees actually like the Virtual First model?

Recent internal surveys on the careers site report that 87% of employees are happy with the current balance of in-person and virtual experiences and 90% feel they have colleagues they can trust. It suits people who value autonomy, strong written communication, and deliberate rather than constant in-person contact.

Is Dropbox fully remote, or will I ever need to go to an office?

Remote is the primary way of working, but Dropbox keeps on-demand Studios and workspaces you can use at no cost, and teams typically gather in person for offsites of 2 to 3 days per quarter, with roughly 5 to 10% travel being typical. In-person time is intentional and community-focused rather than a return-to-office requirement.

What does async by default look like day to day?

You work a nonlinear schedule of your own design, anchored by core collaboration hours that overlap across time zones, and written asynchronous communication is preferred over meetings to protect focus time. Dropbox also publishes free 4-week courses on its careers site teaching best practices for thriving in distributed work.

How does Dropbox set pay for remote roles?

Pay is geo-based: salary ranges are published in job postings, segmented into three US zones plus country-level ranges for Canada, Poland, and Mexico. The zip code of your remote work location determines which metropolitan pay range applies.

Which benefits stand out for remote employees?

Highlights include a 100% 401(k) match up to $6,000 per year, a quarterly perks allowance usable for childcare, wellness, ergonomics, and learning, a $100 monthly gym and wellness reimbursement plus the Peloton Corporate Wellness Program, and up to $145 per month toward phone and internet. Parental leave runs up to 20 weeks for birthing parents and 12 weeks for non-birthing parents.

Do employees actually like the Virtual First model?

Recent internal surveys on the careers site report that 87% of employees are happy with the current balance of in-person and virtual experiences and 90% feel they have colleagues they can trust. It suits people who value autonomy, strong written communication, and deliberate rather than constant in-person contact.

Infrastructure Software Engineer, Metadata Core

Dropbox

Fully Remote

Job Description

Role Description

As a Software Engineer on the Metadata team, you’ll build and operate the large-scale distributed databases that every Dropbox service depends on. Metadata systems are mission-critical, in the live path for all user operations and must meet stringent requirements for latency, durability, and transactional consistency.

You’ll design and evolve the core infrastructure that manages Dropbox’s databases at scale, enabling fast, reliable access to data for millions of users and hundreds of internal services. This work spans distributed systems, replication, caching, and transactional database systems.

You’ll collaborate closely with engineers across Infrastructure and Product teams to ensure the metadata layer meets business needs and continues to scale with Dropbox’s growth. This is an opportunity to leverage your expertise in distributed systems and grow into broader technical leadership.

Our Engineering Career Framework is viewable by anyone outside the company and describes what’s expected for our engineers at each of our career levels. Check out our blog post on this topic and more here.

Responsibilities

Design and maintain distributed database systems providing low-latency, strongly consistent data access
Implement and optimize replication, consensus, and caching mechanisms to meet availability and performance goals
Operate production systems, including participating in the on-call rotation, ensuring high availability and data durability
Collaborate with infrastructure and product teams to assess current and future use cases and requirements, supporting the development of a mid- to long-term roadmap that reflects these needs
Contribute to system design reviews, postmortems, and reliability improvements
Write high-quality, efficient code in Go and Rust for performance-critical systems

On-call work may be necessary occasionally to help address bugs, outages, or other operational issues, with the goal of maintaining a stable and high-quality experience for our customers.

Requirements

5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with strong expertise in distributed systems fundamentals including replication, consistency, partitioning, and fault tolerance
Experience building database platforms, distributed databases, storage systems, or large-scale database infrastructure
Proficiency in Go, Rust, C++ or similar systems languages
Familiarity with consensus and coordination systems (e.g. Raft, Paxos, ZooKeeper, etcd)
Experience operating production services and participating in on-call rotations
Strong debugging and performance analysis skills
Excellent collaboration and communication abilities across teams

Preferred Qualifications

Experience building distributed databases or storage systems
Practical experience with and deep understanding of data structures used in storage systems (e.g. LSM trees, B-trees, Hash Indexes)
Experience operating database systems (e.g. MySQL, Postgres, Cassandra)
Experience with distributed caching, either custom built or operating open source options such as Memcached or Redis
Experience improving reliability and performance in high-scale data systems
Experience working with cross-functional teams to understand their current use cases, identify future needs and requirements, and incorporate them into the team’s roadmap.
Interest in deepening distributed systems expertise and expanding technical leadership

Compensation

Poland Pay Range

272 000 zł—368 000 zł PLN

Benefits & Perks

Health & Wellness

Health Insurance

Dropbox provides medical coverage through Anthem (PPO or HSA) or Kaiser HMO (CA and HI only) for employees and their families.

Dental Insurance

Dental coverage is provided through Guardian Dental for employees and dependents.

Vision Insurance

Vision coverage through Guardian VSP includes a $250 annual allowance for frames or lenses.

Mental Health Benefits

Mental health support is provided through Modern Health, which offers coaching and therapy for employees.

Life Insurance

Life insurance is provided at 2x base salary up to $1M, with AD&D coverage included.

Disability Insurance

Short-term disability covers 60% of pay up to $2,500 per week, and long-term disability covers 60% up to $15,000 per month.

Flexible Spending Account (FSA)

Pre-tax flexible spending accounts are available for healthcare and dependent care expenses.

Health Savings Account (HSA)

When enrolled in the HSA medical plan, Dropbox contributes $233 per month ($2,796 per year) to the employee HSA.

Pet Insurance

Dropbox offers pet insurance coverage for employee pets.

Gender Affirming Care

Health coverage includes transgender healthcare benefits supporting gender-affirming treatments.

Fitness Stipend

Dropbox provides a $100 per month gym and wellness reimbursement plus full free access to the Peloton Corporate Wellness Program.

Wellness Programs

A quarterly perks allowance of up to $5,000-$7,000 per year covers wellness, caregiver support, productivity, ergonomics, learning, and groceries.

Employee Assistance Program

Dropbox provides an Employee Assistance Program with confidential counseling and support resources.

Financial

401(k) / Retirement Plan

Dropbox offers a 401(k) retirement plan including a Mega Backdoor Roth feature allowing up to $23,000 per year in additional after-tax contributions ($30,500/yr for employees 50+).

401(k) Match

Dropbox provides a 100% match on employee 401(k) contributions up to $6,000 per year, disbursed quarterly ($1,500/qtr) with a year-end true-up.

Equity / RSUs

All regular employees receive Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) that vest over 4 years, quarterly at 6.25% per quarter, with no traditional 1-year cliff.

Time Off

Unlimited PTO

Dropbox offers an unlimited PTO policy for vacation and personal time.

Unlimited Sick Days

Dropbox provides unlimited sick leave separate from vacation PTO.

Paid Holidays

Dropbox provides paid holidays in addition to PTO.

Military Leave

Dropbox provides dedicated paid military leave for employees serving in the armed forces.

Remote & Equipment

Company Equipment

Dropbox provides a custom work station and company phone for employees.

Company Offsites / Retreats

Teams gather quarterly for in-person offsites lasting 2-3 days, supplemented by Dropbox Neighborhood community events and on-demand Studios for collaboration.

Coworking Allowance

Dropbox provides access to On-Demand workspaces and Studios at no cost to employees.

Family & Care

Parental Leave

Dropbox states that it "supports families with paid parental and family leave, assistance for adoption and surrogacy, and access to resources for both child and adult back-up care." The company does not publish a leave duration.

Adoption Leave

Adoption assistance reimburses up to $25,000 per child with a $50,000 lifetime maximum, alongside adoption and surrogacy support.

Fertility Benefits

Assistance for adoption and surrogacy for growing families.

Professional Growth

Learning & Development Budget

Dropbox provides a continuing education stipend, tuition reimbursement, online course subscriptions, Dropbox-sponsored tech talks, and Lunch and Learns; learning is also an eligible category under the quarterly perks allowance.

Mentorship Program

Dropbox runs a structured mentorship program for employees plus apprenticeship programs.

Defined Career Pathways

Dropbox publishes an Engineering Career Framework that defines expectations at each level and offers customized development tracks plus a promote-from-within practice.

Culture & Perks

Charity Matching

Dropbox provides a 100% donation match for employee charitable giving up to $2,000 per year.

Employee Product Discount

Employees receive exclusive discounts with partnered companies and on Dropbox products.

Employee Resource Groups

Dropbox supports Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) and a Dropbox Neighborhood community program for connection across the global workforce.

Employee Recognition Awards

Job Description

Role Description

Responsibilities

Requirements

Preferred Qualifications

Compensation

Compensation

Benefits & Perks

Health & Wellness

Financial

Time Off

Remote & Equipment

Family & Care

Professional Growth

Culture & Perks

Tech Stack

JavaScript & Libraries

Frameworks

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Dropbox fully remote, or will I ever need to go to an office?

What does async by default look like day to day?

How does Dropbox set pay for remote roles?

Which benefits stand out for remote employees?

Do employees actually like the Virtual First model?

Interested in this role?

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