Principal Database Infrastructure Engineer

VideoAmp; United States; On-site; USD 190,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Cell phone & wifi reimbursement

Commuter benefits

401(k) with matching

Job summary

VideoAmp is seeking a Principal Database Infrastructure Engineer to join the Database Infrastructure team, architecting scalable, production-grade data systems powering our platform. This role centers on reliability, performance, and developer enablement in a high-impact IC position.

You will design and own foundational database systems serving live customers and internal teams, operating in a rigorous reliability-driven culture as VideoAmp scales its data infrastructure.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with significant depth in database infrastructure, distributed systems, or data platform engineering.
• Strong systems programming in Rust, or deep C++ or Go experience with a clear path to Rust, including async runtimes such as Tokio and concurrent data structures.
• Proven experience building or significantly modifying a distributed data system such as a query engine, stream processor, distributed database, or large-scale data pipeline, with a solid understanding of shuffles, partitioning, and network and memory bottlenecks.
• Fluency with columnar formats and vectorized execution, including Arrow, Parquet, and the mechanics behind their performance characteristics.
• Strong grounding in distributed systems fundamentals: consistent hashing, leader and heartbeat protocols, backpressure, partial failure, and graceful degradation.
• A performance engineering mindset: you profile before optimizing and defend changes with real benchmark numbers.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement the physical plan distribution pass, including network shuffle, coalesce, and partition isolator insertion.
• Own worker discovery and heartbeating, and lead development of the next generation of load balancing: a work-stealing protocol and a replication-aware hash ring, both currently in design, to keep workers evenly loaded and resilient to node loss.
• Work across cost-based join reordering, cross-stage bloom filter cascade, scan deduplication, and selectivity estimation.
• Own the NVMe LRU cache over S3, Parquet read strategies including full-file and range reads, and Iceberg partition pruning and snapshot handling.
• Close the remaining gap on queries where we still trail Snowflake, specifically multi-shuffle plans and redistribution after scalar-subquery extraction.

Skills

Distributed systems

Database infrastructure

Rust/Cpp/Go

Query optimization

Columnar formats (Arrow/Parquet)

Tools

Apache DataFusion

Apache Iceberg

SQL engines

Kubernetes

AWS S3

Job description

Remote, United States | Remote | $190,000 to $220,000 + Equity + Benefits

About VideoAmp

VideoAmp is the tech-first measurement company transforming how advertising is valued, bought, and sold. Powered by currency-grade big data and a best-in-class technology stack, our platform gives advertisers, agencies, and digital partners the ability to plan, optimize, and measure media investments across every screen, from linear TV and OTT to CTV and digital video.

VideoAmp is accelerating investment in agentic AI and intelligent optimization technologies, helping clients drive measurable, real-world outcomes in an increasingly complex media landscape. With 880% year-over-year measurement growth, 98% coverage of the TV ecosystem, and partnerships with 11 agency groups and 1,000+ advertisers, we're not just keeping pace with the industry. We’re defining what comes next.

We believe great work requires great people, people who say "I’ll find a way" instead of "it can't be done."

The Role

The Principal Database Infrastructure Engineer will serve as a technical cornerstone of VideoAmp’s Database Infrastructure team, driving the design and execution of scalable, production-critical data systems that power VideoAmp’s platform. This is a high-impact individual contributor role at the intersection of distributed database engineering, query performance, storage architecture, and developer enablement.

You will architect and own the foundational database systems serving live customers and internal teams, operate in a rigorous, reliability-driven culture, and help VideoAmp scale its data infrastructure as the platform grows.

What You’ll Do

Distributed Query Execution

• Design and implement the physical plan distribution pass, including network shuffle, coalesce, and partition isolator insertion. Own the plan serialization codec that ships sub-plans to workers, and maintain the S3 and Flight result exchange paths.

Worker Coordination at Scale

• Own worker discovery and heartbeating, and lead development of the next generation of load balancing: a work-stealing protocol and a replication-aware hash ring, both currently in design, to keep workers evenly loaded and resilient to node loss.

Query Optimizer Internals

• Work across cost-based join reordering, cross-stage bloom filter cascade, scan deduplication, and selectivity estimation. Several of these live in our DataFusion fork; you will upstream where it makes sense and maintain the delta where it does not.

Storage and Caching

• Own the NVMe LRU cache over S3, Parquet read strategies including full-file and range reads, and Iceberg partition pruning and snapshot handling.

Performance Engineering

• Close the remaining gap on queries where we still trail Snowflake, specifically multi-shuffle plans and redistribution after scalar-subquery extraction. TPC-H benchmarks are the scorecard.

What You’ll Bring

Required

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with significant depth in database infrastructure, distributed systems, or data platform engineering.
• Strong systems programming in Rust, or deep C++ or Go experience with a clear path to Rust, including async runtimes such as Tokio and concurrent data structures.
• Proven experience building or significantly modifying a distributed data system such as a query engine, stream processor, distributed database, or large-scale data pipeline, with a solid understanding of shuffles, partitioning, and network and memory bottlenecks.
• Fluency with columnar formats and vectorized execution, including Arrow, Parquet, and the mechanics behind their performance characteristics.
• Strong grounding in distributed systems fundamentals: consistent hashing, leader and heartbeat protocols, backpressure, partial failure, and graceful degradation.
• A performance engineering mindset: you profile before optimizing and defend changes with real benchmark numbers.

Strongly Preferred

• Direct experience with Apache DataFusion or another SQL query planner or optimizer such as Spark Catalyst, Calcite, Trino, ClickHouse, or DuckDB.
• Experience with Apache Iceberg or a comparable open table format such as Delta Lake or Hudi.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes and cloud infrastructure including EKS, S3, and IRSA, particularly on ARM or Graviton.
• Query optimizer experience including join ordering, predicate pushdown, and cardinality or selectivity estimation.

Nice to Have

• Experience with a distributed SQL store such as CockroachDB, Flight SQL or gRPC, or contributions to open source data infrastructure projects.
• Experience building or working with developer tooling in agentic or programmatic data access contexts, and is a strong plus.

Compensation & Benefits

Base Salary

$190,000 to $220,000 (commensurate with experience)

Equity

Equity participation included

Time Off

Discretionary & flexible PTO + Spring, Summer & Winter company breaks

Health

Inclusive and comprehensive medical, dental & vision

Financial

401(k) with matching

• HSA & FSA

Family

Paid Maternity & Parental Leave for all family additions

Perks

Cell phone & wifi reimbursement

• Commuter benefits

Our Values

01 One VideoAmp

We win together

We operate as one team, prioritizing shared success over individual wins. We collaborate across functions, support one another, and assume positive intent, because when one of us succeeds, we all do.

02 Own the Outcome

Accountability + Empowerment

We take full responsibility for results, not just tasks. We act with urgency, make decisions with confidence, and own both successes and setbacks while continuously improving.

03 Raise the Bar

Quality

• Trust
• Excellence

We hold ourselves and each other to a high standard. We deliver thoughtful, high-quality work, build trust through consistency and integrity, and continuously push for better outcomes.

Ready to build what's next in AI-powered media measurement?

VideoAmp is an equal opportunity employer committed to building an inclusive, diverse team. We celebrate different perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds, because that's how we build something great.

videoamp.com

Remote, United States