Software Engineer, Database Systems
About the Team: The Database Systems team specializes in high-performance distributed databases. Our team built Rockset, the real-time search, analytics, and vector database that powers all vector search and retrieval augmented generation (RAG) at OpenAI.
What this role actually needs.
Software Engineer, Database Systems at OpenAI in San Francisco. UpJobz keeps this listing high-signal for applicants targeting serious high-tech roles across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. About the Team: The Database Systems team specializes in high-performance distributed databases. Our team built Rockset, the real-time search, analytics, and vector database that powers all vector search and retrieval augmented generation (RAG) at OpenAI.
Day-to-day expectations
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- Design, build, and operate high-performance distributed systems
- Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks to scale infrastructure to the next order of magnitude
- Define long-term technical direction and guide system evolution
- Collaborate with product, engineering, and research teams to deliver scalable and reliable infrastructure
- Dig deep into complex production issues across the stack
- Contribute to incident response, postmortems, and best practices for system reliability
What a strong candidate brings
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- 4+ years of relevant industry experience, with 2+ years leading large scale, complex projects or teams as an engineer or tech lead
- Experience with distributed systems at scale, with a strong focus on performance, reliability, and scalability
- Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate across highly technical and cross-functional teams
- Proficiency in a systems programming language such as C++ (our core engine is written in C++) is strongly preferred
- Fluency in cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure) and IaC tools (Terraform or similar)
- Experience with Linux systems, CI/CD pipelines, and modern observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, etc.)
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- Tailor your resume around ai and llm instead of sending a generic application.
- Use the first two bullets of your application to connect your background directly to software engineer, database systems is a high-signal on-site role in san francisco, and it is most realistic for united states residents.
- Open the role quickly if it fits and bookmark three similar jobs before you leave the page.
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- $230K - $385K is visible, so calibrate your application around the posted range.
- Use united states residents as part of your positioning so the recruiter does not have to infer it.
- Show concrete examples of succeeding in on-site environments.
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