Research Scientist (Database Systems)

Location: Remote from the United States, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, or the United Kingdom

Salary: $175,000–$220,000 annually in other US locations; $190,000–$235,000 annually in premium US locations such as San Francisco, New York City, and Seattle, plus equity.

Company

ClickHouse is a rapidly scaling, globally distributed startup developing open-source analytical database technology.

What you will do

• Conduct applied research to improve the performance, scalability, reliability, and functionality of ClickHouse, PostgreSQL, and other open-source database systems.
• Design and evaluate algorithms, data structures, and architectures for query optimization, indexing, storage, execution, and distributed data management.
• Develop research prototypes and production-grade implementations with database engine, infrastructure, and data-plane engineers.
• Analyze large-scale workloads, performance traces, benchmarks, and production telemetry to identify bottlenecks and optimization opportunities.
• Design experiments and benchmarks across realistic workloads, hardware configurations, and deployment environments.
• Communicate results through technical reports, open-source contributions, internal presentations, and publications at leading systems and database venues.

Requirements

• Master’s or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Data Science, or a related field, with research experience in databases, distributed systems, systems software, or machine learning systems.
• Strong publication record in venues such as SIGMOD, VLDB, SOSP, OSDI, NSDI, or NeurIPS, with relevant database or systems research.
• Strong programming and systems-development experience with database internals or large systems codebases such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, or ClickHouse.
• Proficiency in C, C++, Rust, Zig, or a comparable low-level programming language.
• Strong analytical, experimental, problem-solving, and technical communication skills.
• Ability to work remotely from the United States, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, or the United Kingdom.

Nice to have

• Experience developing or operating database systems in AWS, Google Cloud Platform, or Microsoft Azure.
• Familiarity with large language models, reinforcement learning, learned optimization, or other machine learning and systems techniques.
• Experience contributing to large open-source systems projects, including database engines, distributed systems, compilers, or storage systems.
• Experience with TLA+/PlusCal, Alloy, Lean, LLVM, eBPF, Python, Go, profiling, debugging, or tracing tools.
• Experience optimizing database systems with GPU, FPGA, CXL, CUDA, SYCL, ROCm, or specialized FPGA development flows.

Culture & Benefits

• Remote-friendly work environment across more than 25 countries.
• Employer contributions toward healthcare.
• Stock options for every new team member.
• Flexible time off in the US and generous leave entitlement in other countries.
• $500 home office setup allowance for remote employees.
• Opportunities to participate in company-wide in-person gatherings.