Senior Software Engineer (Databases)

TL;DR

Senior Software Engineer (Databases): Building and scaling high-performance database infrastructure for AI products and research initiatives with an accent on distributed architectures and multi-cloud storage solutions. Focus on architecting systems for 100x growth, ensuring reliability at massive scale, and optimizing database performance for both product and research workloads.

Location: Must be based in San Francisco, CA, New York City, NY, or Seattle, WA. Position requires hybrid attendance (at least 25% in-office).

Salary: $300,000 - $320,000 USD

Company

An AI safety and research company building reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems like Claude.

What you will do

• Drive technical direction for database solutions supporting both Product and Research teams.
• Design and implement scalable database systems to support millions of users across the product ecosystem.
• Architect data storage solutions across AWS, GCP, and other deployment environments.
• Optimize database performance, reliability, and cost efficiency under heavy traffic.
• Partner with research teams to build infrastructure that accelerates innovation.
• Make critical build vs. buy decisions for database technologies.

Requirements

• 6+ years of professional experience building and scaling database systems.
• 1+ years of experience leading complex, large-scale projects or teams.
• Deep expertise in distributed database architectures and OLTP systems.
• Proven ability to scale databases through massive growth cycles.
• Strong balance of startup agility and production reliability mindset.
• Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent experience.

Nice to have

• Deep expertise scaling PostgreSQL, MySQL, or DynamoDB.
• Experience with Redis, Temporal, or vector databases.
• Knowledge of multi-cloud or hybrid cloud database solutions.
• Experience with database orchestration and automation at scale.

Culture & Benefits

• Competitive compensation with equity components.
• Generous vacation and parental leave policies.
• Flexible working hours with an emphasis on collaboration.
• Supportive environment for AI research and safety.
• Opportunity to contribute to foundational AI infrastructure.