Senior Software Engineer

LanceDB; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

LanceDB Inc. is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to expand Lance and LanceDB within the data infrastructure ecosystem.

You will work at the intersection of HPC, big data, and open-source systems, delivering scale and performance improvements and enabling broader integrations. You will contribute to table formats, data encodings, and Rust-based Lance components while promoting the Lance format at conferences and in the OSS community.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience building high-performance data systems or databases.
• Strong background in distributed systems and open-source software.
• Experience with Spark, Trino, or similar data tooling.

Responsibilities

• Design and maintain distributed data operations for LanceDB.
• Build efficient indices to accelerate queries and predictor pushdown.
• Contribute to Lance formats, encodings, and Rust implementations.
• Drive integration efforts with Spark, Hive Metastore, Trino, Ray, and other systems.
• Improve internal data processing infrastructure and open-source collaboration.

Skills

Big data systems

C++/Java/Scala

Rust (learning)

Independent contributor

Tools

Hadoop

Spark

Iceberg

Trino/Presto

PyTorch

Job description

About LanceDB

AI advances at the speed of its research, and research moves at the speed of its data. LanceDB is the AI-native Multimodal Lakehouse: one system where a researcher curates petabytes of video, audio, and every signal derived from them with a few lines of Python, and the next training run starts as fast as the next idea. Customers like Runway, Midjourney, and Netflix build the future of AI on LanceDB, from frontier and world models to robots and autonomous vehicles.

About the Role

We're looking for a Senior Software Engineer to help expand the reach of Lance and LanceDB within the broader data infrastructure ecosystem. You'll work at the intersection of high-performance computing, big data, and open-source systems. You will contribute scale and performance improvements, integrations with the wider data and AI ecosystem, simplifying distributed operations, and usability and maintainability enhancements.

What You'll Do

• Designing and maintaining efficient distributed Lance dataset operations
• Building efficient indices to enable predicate pushdown and accelerate queries in Spark, Ray, or Trino
• Working on table formats, data encodings, and various aspects of the Lance format in Rust
• Driving open-source community efforts to integrate the Lance format with Spark, Hive Metastore, Presto, Trino, Ray, and other data infrastructure systems
• Operating and improving internal data processing infrastructure
• Promoting the Lance format in open-source communities and at Big Data conferences

What We're Looking For

• 10+ years of experience building high-performance databases, big data systems, or large-scale data services
• Deep understanding of internals of open-source Big Data or AI training systems (e.g., Hadoop, Spark, Flink, Ray, Iceberg, Delta Lake, Hudi, ClickHouse, Trino, Presto, PyTorch, or JAX)
• Strong experience with high-performance computing in C++, Java, and/or Scala
• Experience with Rust (or willingness to learn it)
• Proven ability to move fast, work independently, and collaborate with a high-caliber team

Nice to Have

• Contributor, committer, or PMC member in Apache or other large open-source projects
• Experience with Apache Arrow, DataFusion, Parquet, Iceberg, or Delta Lake
• Track record of driving large features or integrations in distributed systems
• Strong community presence and passion for open-source collaboration