Research Scientist - Technologies of Data Management, LLM and AI Agents - Global Frontier Tech [...]

ByteDance; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 212,800 - 387,600; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) savings plan with company match

Paid parental leave

Paid holidays and personal time off

Job summary

ByteDance in San Jose is seeking talented individuals to join our team focusing on AI infrastructure and LLM technologies. As a graduate, you will tackle complex challenges and have opportunities to innovate. Successful candidates must have a PhD in a relevant field and be skilled in programming languages like C/C++, Python, or Go.

This position offers an annual salary between $212,800 and $387,600, and includes various benefits such as medical, dental insurance, 401(k) matching, and generous paid time off.

Qualifications

• Completion of a PhD in Software Development or related field is required.
• Skilled in at least one mainstream programming language with strong coding ability.
• Ability to independently design and develop complex systems.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to R&D projects on AI infrastructure and LLM technologies.
• Design and develop systems for enhanced data management.
• Research and implement solutions for AI workload efficiency.

Skills

Mainstream programming languages (C/C++, Python, Go)

Data structures

Algorithm fundamentals

System design

Education

PhD in Software Development, Computer Science, or related field

Job description

Responsibilities

We are looking for talented individuals to join our team in 2027. As a graduate, you will get opportunities to pursue bold ideas, tackle complex challenges, and unlock limitless growth. Launch your career where inspiration is infinite at our Company.

Successful candidates must be able to commit to an onboarding date by end of year 2027. Please state your availability and graduation date clearly in your resume.

Team Introduction

With the fast growth of Bytedance's business, Bytedance's system infrastructure is currently at a massive scale and requires versatile system solutions. Our lab collaborates with HQ teams on advanced R&D projects, focusing on LLM/AI + Infrastructure technologies, which includes both infrastructure for LLM/AI and LLM/AI for infrastructure. To name a few, we are building a new cloud-native vector index library. Our TextToSQL project ranks top on well known industry benchmarks. We also work on advanced AIOps technologies that are used by our Volcano cloud products.

Besides achieving great business impacts, we also encourage publishing on top tier conferences. In year 2025 alone, our lab published nearly 20 papers in top tier conferences, such as SIGMOD, VLDB, FSE, ICLR, EuroSys, WWW etc. We hire students with great technical skills, willingness to learn and solve complex technical challenges and passion in making an impact on millions of users.

Topics & Research Areas

With The Large-scale Deployment Of Large Language Models (LLMs) And AI Agents, Traditional Cloud-native Infrastructure Can No Longer Meet The Extreme Performance And Elasticity Demands Of AI Workloads. This project conducts systematic research across the full stack of AI infrastructure, focusing on the following areas:

• Data Management for LLM and Agents
  • Cloud-native vector search: Optimize core technologies for vector retrieval in large model applications. Build a cloud-native distributed vector indexing engine to support ultra-large-scale vector search with low latency and low cost.
  • Multi-modal query processing: Support seamlessly integrated multi-modal query processing, including vector, full-text and regular SQL query processing over various typed data. In addition, how to support large scale semantic operators in a cost-effective and low-latency way is also our research focus.
• Intelligence & Agent Architecture
  • Explore infrastructure auto-optimization based on AI Agent workflows. Build a self-evolving business Agent framework, enabling full-stack intelligent optimization through “AI for Infrastructure”. We look into various ways to apply AI/LLM in solving infrastructure problems, such as AIOps, NL-to-SQL, Auto Skills etc. This project aims to build next-generation AI-native infrastructure to support LLMs and AI Agents, improving resource utilization, reducing costs, enabling elastic scalability, and driving the evolution of AI infrastructure technologies.

• Topic Content
  • With the large-scale adoption of LLMs and AI agents, traditional cloud-native infrastructure can no longer meet the ultra-high performance and elasticity requirements of AI workloads. This topic conducts systematic research across the entire AI infrastructure stack:
  • Network and Observability: Research intelligent fault localization and root cause analysis for large-scale AI clusters, combined with intelligent tuning of time-series databases to improve cluster stability.
  • Storage Systems: Develop serverless high-performance elastic file systems and storage acceleration architectures specifically for AI scenarios, explore hardware-software co-optimization for DPU, and overcome AI storage performance bottlenecks.
  • Data Center Power Scheduling: Research GPU/CPU/MEM heterogeneous collaborative scheduling technologies, build a heterogeneous power orchestration system for AI agents, and address scheduling challenges including heterogeneous workloads and state dependencies.
  • Vector Retrieval: Optimize core vector retrieval technologies for LLM-powered applications, building a cloud-native distributed vector index engine to meet ultra-large-scale vector retrieval demands with low latency and low cost.
  • Intelligence and Agent Architecture: Explore automatic infrastructure optimization based on AI Agent workflows, build a self-evolvable business agent framework, and enable full-stack intelligent optimization through AI for Infra.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• Individuals who are completing or recently completed a PhD in Software Development, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• Skilled in at least one mainstream programming language (e.g., C/C++, Python, Go), with strong coding ability, data structures, and algorithm fundamentals.
• Be able to independently design and develop complex systems
• Deliver design documents, independent deliverables, and demo systems
• Be familiar with state-of-the-art data management technologies

Preferred Qualifications:

• Strong learning ability and self-motivation. Good teamwork and communication skills.
• Excellent problem analysis and solving abilities.
• Capable of independently exploring solutions. Strong mental resilience and adaptability when facing challenges.
• Have research experience in LLMs and infrastructure is highly preferred
• Have published at least two papers as first authors in conferences or journals such as SIGMOD, VLDB, ASE, FSE, NSDI/OSDI, EuroSys etc.

Job Information

For Pay Transparency Compensation Description (Annually)

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $212,800 - $387,600 annually.

Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units.

Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others. Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure).

The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.

Legal & Accessibility

For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates: Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:

• Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;
• Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and
• Exercising sound judgement.

About Us

Founded in 2012, ByteDance's mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. ByteDance has products including TikTok, Lemon8, CapCut and Pico, and platforms like Toutiao, Douyin, and Xigua.

Diversity & Inclusion: ByteDance is committed to creating an inclusive space where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. We are committed to celebrating diverse voices and creating an environment that reflects the communities we reach.

Reasonable Accommodation: ByteDance is committed to providing reasonable accommodations in our recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, sincerely held religious beliefs or other reasons protected by applicable laws. If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at https://tinyurl.com/RA-request