Senior AI-Native Database Architect & Researcher

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

Job summary

ByteDance seeks a Senior Software Engineer / Researcher to design and implement AI-native database systems in Seattle. You will architect storage engines for embedding ingestion, vector retrieval, and real-time AI interaction, delivering scalable AI-enabled data platforms.

The role emphasizes collaboration across research, engineering, and product teams, with opportunities to contribute to research publications and open-source projects within a cutting-edge infrastructure group.

Qualifications

• Minimum: Bachelor’s, Master’s, or Ph.D. in Computer Science or related fields with strong systems or AI research experience.
• 2+ years in core database systems, large-scale distributed infrastructure, or machine learning systems.
• Strong coding and system-level design skills in C++, Rust, or Go.

Responsibilities

• Architect and implement AI-native databases that integrate structured, unstructured, and vectorized data.
• Design storage engines optimized for embedding ingestion, multimodal retrieval, and real-time AI interaction.
• Build scalable, distributed vector search systems with low-latency guarantees.
• Develop AI-augmented query processors that leverage LLMs for semantic parsing, intent understanding, and cost estimation.
• Collaborate on retrieval-augmented generation infrastructure and LLM memory backends.
• Drive innovations in learned index structures, self-optimizing databases, and AI-integrated transaction systems.
• Publish and contribute to open-source communities.

Skills

C++

Rust

Go

Education

Bachelor's / Master’s / Ph.D. in Computer Science

Tools

Faiss

Milvus

DuckDB

ClickHouse

TiKV

RocksDB

Job description

ByteDance seeks a Senior Software Engineer / Researcher to design and implement AI-native database systems in Seattle. You will architect storage engines for embedding ingestion, vector retrieval, and real-time AI interaction, delivering scalable AI-enabled data platforms.

The role emphasizes collaboration across research, engineering, and product teams, with opportunities to contribute to research publications and open-source projects within a cutting-edge infrastructure group.