Senior R&D AI Systems Engineer — Data Infrastructure

United States Digital Space LLC; Austin (TX); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

dbt Labs in Austin, TX is seeking a Senior R&D Software Engineer to join our fast-growing AI team. You’ll build production-grade software for the company’s AI products, designed to empower agents with governed context and an end-to-end data stack.

The role blends research with practical development, requiring versatility across backend services and frontend components, SRE tasks, and a willingness to wear multiple hats in a startup-like environment.

Qualifications

• Senior R&D Software Engineer with a passion for AI and building production-grade software.
• Proficiency in Java/Python, SQL, and modern cloud-native stacks.
• Experience shipping features end-to-end in a fast-moving environment.

Responsibilities

• Research AI retrieval techniques and assess their applicability to the roadmap.
• Prototype ideas quickly and turn the best into shipped features.
• Develop back-end and front-end components for the AI product.
• Contribute to AISQL: translating natural language to SQL grounded in dbt metrics.
• Maintain production reliability through on-call, incident response, and SRE practices.

Skills

Java

Python

SQL

React

TypeScript

Kubernetes

Postgres

Tools

dbt

Iceberg

Delta Lake

Job description

dbt Labs in Austin, TX is seeking a Senior R&D Software Engineer to join our fast-growing AI team. You’ll build production-grade software for the company’s AI products, designed to empower agents with governed context and an end-to-end data stack.

The role blends research with practical development, requiring versatility across backend services and frontend components, SRE tasks, and a willingness to wear multiple hats in a startup-like environment.