Senior Software Engineer, AI Infrastructure - Developer Tooling

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

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

401(k) with match

Paid parental leave

Disability insurance

Life insurance

Wellbeing benefits

Holidays

Sick leave

Paid personal time

Job summary

ByteDance in San Jose is hiring a Senior Software Engineer, AI Infrastructure - Developer Tooling to design and scale retrieval systems and build tooling for code agents. You will own RAG pipelines, embedding workflows, and evaluation frameworks in a production-grade environment.

You will collaborate with a Technology team on cutting-edge AI infrastructure, participate in design reviews, and contribute to scalable vector databases and tooling for multi-step code tasks.

Responsibilities

• Design and scale retrieval pipelines for RAG infrastructure.
• Build embedding pipelines, chunking strategies, and re-ranking.
• Develop query understanding and rewriting to boost retrieval relevance.
• Manage vector database infrastructure at production scale.
• Create agent architectures for multi-step code generation and debugging.
• Implement tool-use patterns such as function calling and sandboxes.
• Develop context management for long-form code understanding.
• Design and maintain evaluation frameworks for retrieval quality and task completion.
• Build benchmarks for realistic coding tasks and continuous testing.
• Create reproducible testing infrastructure with automated regression checks.

Job description

Senior Software Engineer, AI Infrastructure - Developer Tooling

Location: San Jose

Team: Technology

Employment Type: Regular

Job Code: A220576

Responsibilities

Retrieval Systems (RAG Infrastructure)

• Design and scale retrieval pipelines including vector search, BM25, and hybrid retrieval strategies.
• Build and optimize embedding pipelines, chunking strategies, and re-ranking systems.
• Develop query understanding and rewriting components to improve retrieval relevance.
• Manage vector database infrastructure at production scale.

Coding Agent Development

• Build agent architectures that support multi-step code generation, refactoring, debugging, and diagnostics.
• Implement tool-use patterns (function calling, code execution sandboxing, file system interaction).
• Develop context management strategies for long-form code understanding.

Evaluation & Benchmarking

• Design and maintain evaluation frameworks for retrieval quality and agent task completion.
• Build custom benchmark suites for real-world coding task assessment.
• Create reproducible testing infrastructure with automated regression detection.

Compensation

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

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.

Criminal History Considerations

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:

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

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