Senior AI for Databases Research Engineer

ByteDance; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 202,160 - 368,220; Full time

Job summary

ByteDance in Seattle seeks a Senior Research Engineer/Scientist for AI for Databases. You will design and implement intelligent data infrastructure to improve database performance, scalability, and usability.

You will work across query optimization, indexing, workload forecasting, and self-managing databases at scale, publishing results at top venues and contributing to open-source projects.

Qualifications

• PhD in Computer Science, Data Science, or a related field with a focus on databases, systems, or machine learning.
• Strong publication record in accredited venues (SIGMOD, VLDB, ICDE, NeurIPS).
• Strong background in database internals (PostgreSQL, MySQL, or modern cloud-native databases/BigData platforms).
• Hands-on experience with machine learning frameworks (XGBoost, LightGBM, TensorFlow, PyTorch, scikit-learn).
• Preferred: Python, C++, or Java.
• Experience with cloud database platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure).
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills.
• Familiarity with LLM, reinforcement learning, neural architecture search, or automated database tuning.

Responsibilities

• Conduct research and development in applying AI/ML techniques to database management systems.
• Develop intelligent algorithms for tasks such as query planning, indexing, storage management, and workload prediction/scheduling.
• Collaborate with data infrastructure and engineering teams to integrate AI models into production systems.
• Analyze large-scale datasets from database workloads to uncover optimization opportunities.
• Publish findings in top-tier conferences and journals (e.g., VLDB, SIGMOD, ICDE, NeurIPS).
• Contribute to open-source projects or internal tools supporting AI-enhanced databases.

Skills

AI/ML in databases

Analytical skills

Communication skills

Education

PhD in Computer Science or Data Science

Tools

XGBoost

LightGBM

TensorFlow

PyTorch

scikit-learn

PostgreSQL

MySQL

Cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure)

Job description

ByteDance in Seattle seeks a Senior Research Engineer/Scientist for AI for Databases. You will design and implement intelligent data infrastructure to improve database performance, scalability, and usability.

You will work across query optimization, indexing, workload forecasting, and self-managing databases at scale, publishing results at top venues and contributing to open-source projects.