Senior Software Engineer / Researcher, AI-Native database systems

Responsibilities

About the Team

Join ByteDance’s database R&D team, where you’ll build and own cutting-edge database products supporting Bytedance’s global infrastructure. Our diverse portfolio includes relational databases, distributed caches, key-value stores, document databases, graph databases, wide-column stores, search engines, and multi-model databases. In this role, you’ll have the opportunity to enhance these services in a cloud-native environment, embracing a culture of intellectual curiosity, self-direction, and problem-solving. We are building the next-generation AI-native database systems—intelligent, multimodal, and designed for the era of large models. Our systems are not just data stores; they’re reasoning engines, retrieval platforms, and real-time memory for AI agents. As a Senior Software Engineer or Researcher, you will be at the forefront of rethinking how databases work when built from the ground up for AI workloads. You’ll help create infrastructure that powers intelligent systems across TikTok, CapCut, and future applications that haven’t been imagined yet.

Responsibilities

• Architect and implement AI-native databases that seamlessly integrate structured, unstructured, and vectorized data.
• Design storage engines optimized for embedding ingestion, multimodal retrieval, and real-time AI interaction.
• Build scalable and distributed vector search systems with low-latency guarantees.
• Develop AI-augmented query processors that leverage large language models (LLMs) for semantic parsing, intent understanding, and cost estimation.
• Collaborate on developing retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) infrastructure and LLM agent memory backends.
• Drive innovations in learned index structures, self-optimizing databases, and AI-integrated transaction systems.
• Publish and contribute to broader research and open-source communities.

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Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s, Master’s, or Ph.D. in Computer Science or related fields with strong systems or AI research experience.
• 2+ years in core database systems, large-scale distributed infrastructure, or machine learning systems.
• Strong coding and system-level design skills in C++ / Rust / Go.
• Deep expertise in one or more of the following areas: Storage engine architecture (LSM-trees, column stores, HTAP systems) / Vector retrieval systems, similarity search, and ANN indexing / AI infra or model-serving infrastructure (especially for embeddings / RAG / LLMs) / Semantic search, agent systems, or AI-native memory frameworks
• Ability to collaborate across research, engineering, and product teams to translate ideas into production systems.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with open-source systems such as Faiss, Milvus, DuckDB, ClickHouse, TiKV, RocksDB.
• Publications at top-tier conferences (e.g., SIGMOD, VLDB, NeurIPS, MLSys, ICDE).
• Familiarity with GCP, AWS, or Azure’s database and AI integration strategies.
• Prior contributions to RAG, memory-augmented models, or self-tuning database components.

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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.

About Us

Founded in 2012, ByteDance's mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. With a suite of more than a dozen products, including TikTok, Lemon8, CapCut and Pico as well as platforms specific to the China market, including Toutiao, Douyin, and Xigua, ByteDance has made it easier and more fun for people to connect with, consume, and create content.

Why Join ByteDance

Inspiring creativity is at the core of ByteDance's mission. Our innovative products are built to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect – and our global, diverse teams make that possible. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and enrich life - a mission we work towards every day.

As ByteDancers, we strive to do great things with great people. We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. By constantly iterating and fostering an "Always Day 1" mindset, we achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our Company, and our users. When we create and grow together, the possibilities are limitless. Join us.

Diversity & Inclusion

ByteDance is committed to creating an inclusive space where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. Our platform connects people from across the globe and so does our workplace. At ByteDance, our mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. To achieve that goal, we are committed to celebrating our diverse voices and to creating an environment that reflects the many communities we reach. We are passionate about this and hope you are too.

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