Member of Technical Staff (Rust, Search & Database Engines)

Alumni Ventures; Bellevue (WA); On-site; USD 100,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

A technology company specializing in AI applications is seeking a Rust Software Engineer to lead database development for its open-source project. This role involves designing and building high-performance database engine features while collaborating directly with enterprise customers. Candidates should have significant experience with Rust or C/C++, and a background in database engineering. The ideal candidate will thrive in an innovative environment and is passionate about building impactful technology.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of professional Rust experience or 5+ years of C/C++ experience.
• Experience designing and shipping production database engines.
• Strong design and architectural decision-making skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead database development in Spice.ai OSS.
• Design and build database engine features.
• Work directly with enterprise customers.

Skills

Rust programming

C/C++ programming

Database engineering

Communication skills

Open-source contribution

Tools

Apache DataFusion

duckdb-rs

Cloud-native development

Job description

Building data-driven AI applications and agents is too complex, even for advanced developers.

This new generation of applications need fast, secure access to data across disparate systems, the ability to search and reason over that data, and infrastructure that’s reliable enough to run in production. Today, teams often need to piece together query engines, search systems, caches, and AI tooling, adding significant complexity along the way.

At Spice AI, we simplify this by unifying query federation, search, and AI into a single runtime for building intelligent applications. Our mission is to make building AI-powered software as easy as building a modern web application and help developers build the next generation of applications. We offer both open source and fully managed cloud deployments.

We’re looking for a Rust Software Engineer to lead database development in Spice.ai OSS. In this role, you’ll design and build high-performance database engine features in Spice.ai, Apache DataFusion, Apache Ballista, Arrow, Iceberg, Vortex, and duckdb-rs.

Who we are looking for

• You are an exceptional engineer.
• You are a problem solver. You start customer problems and figure out how to solve them with technology.
• You think differently. You do not accept the status-quo. You challenge the current model of the world and take leaps of faith to build it better for everyone.
• You are positive. Instead of focusing on limitations, you ask what’s possible.
• You care about meaningful work. Your work is more than a job.
• You are comfortable with ambiguity and unknowns, and in these situations, you lead by creating clarity.
• You are passionate about high performance and have high standards.

What we're looking for

• 2+ years professional Rust experience or 5+ years professional C/C++ experience.
• Experience in designing, implementing, scaling, and shipping production database engines, distributed, and data systems.
• A track record of strong design, architectural, engineering, and product decisions.
• Excellent communication skills.
• Ability to ramp up quickly and hit the ground running.
• Ideally, experience contributing to open-source projects.
• Experience with Apache infra, CNCF-stack, or cloud-native development.

In this role, you'll

• Work side-by-side with the founders as a leader and outstanding contributor in the Spice.ai open-source project.
• Contribute to designing and building the Spice.ai Cloud Platform.
• Take ownership of initiatives to improve our offerings and deliver exceptional developer experiences.
• Work directly with enterprise customers and build with them to enable their scenarios.

Your first 90-days

• Your first week - contribute a bug fix or minor improvement to the Spice.ai OSS project
• Your first month - ramp up and contribute meaningful improvements to the Spice.ai OSS project
• 30-60 days - take technical and engineering ownership of an entire feature area.
• 60-90 days - propose and execute on aligned technical strategy going forward.