Database & Systems Engineer
Engineers in this role design and operate the database and storage systems that underpin AI infrastructure at massive scale, handling everything from query optimization and transaction management to distributed storage architecture. They work deeply with storage engines, cache layers, and multi-database topologies, making critical tradeoffs between consistency, performance, and resilience as their systems support billions of requests and exabyte-scale workloads. Unlike query optimization or distributed systems specialists, these engineers own the full vertical of how data is stored, retrieved, and scaled—partnering with infrastructure and product teams to ensure databases reliably serve both transactional product workloads and compute-intensive AI training pipelines. They typically sit within platform or infrastructure organizations alongside teams building query engines, replication systems, and cloud infrastructure.
Skills
What companies are looking for in this role.
Designing and optimizing distributed query engines and query execution plans
Building and maintaining large-scale database systems with high performance and reliability
Designing and implementing distributed storage systems and storage engines
Implementing data structures and algorithms for efficient data retrieval and manipulation
Debugging, profiling, and optimizing system performance including memory, CPU, and I/O
Implementing indexing strategies and query optimization techniques
Architecting systems for distributed execution across multiple nodes and cloud environments
Managing transactions, consistency, and durability in database systems
Building scalable storage solutions for multi-tenant environments and handling large data volumes
Designing and operating OLTP (online transaction processing) systems at scale
Integrating and managing APIs between different database and system components
Designing and implementing efficient data encoding and compression strategies
Implementing observability, monitoring, and diagnostic tooling for distributed systems
Building specialized database systems for AI workloads including vector search and embeddings
Designing systems for observability and tracing data collection at scale
Implementing GPU-accelerated and specialized hardware-aware storage systems
Building change data capture and data movement infrastructure
Designing multi-cloud and multi-region data architecture and migration strategies
Collaborating with cross-functional teams to align technical decisions with product requirements
Communicating complex technical concepts clearly to diverse audiences
Taking ownership of system reliability, durability, and customer impact
Mentoring and upleveling peers through code review and knowledge sharing
Leading incident response and post-mortem processes for production systems
Providing technical leadership and setting architectural direction for teams
Technology
The tools and technologies that define this role.
Open Jobs
32 open Database & Systems Engineer jobs across 12 companies.
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