Performance & Reliability Engineer

At Aerospike, we dream big and deliver even bigger. Our mission is to unleash the power of the world’s real-time data with a database built for infinite scale, speed, and sustainability.

We empower companies to tackle seemingly insurmountable challenges and achieve what’s never been done before. That’s why we developed the world’s leading real-time database—powering mission-critical applications for the most innovative, category-disrupting organizations.

Aerospike enables extreme-scale, real-time applications that:

• Fight fraud in microseconds.
• Drive dramatic increases in shopping cart size.
• Power global digital payments.
• Deliver hyper-personalized user experiences to tens of millions.

Industry leaders like Airtel, Experian, Nielsen, PayPal, Snap, Verizon Media, and Wayfair trust Aerospike as the foundation for their future. They rely on us to act in the moments that matter.

Headquartered in Mountain View, California, with offices in London, Bangalore, and Tel Aviv, Aerospike is the uncontested leader in next-generation, always-on, hyperscale data solutions. Unlike legacy NoSQL systems, our patented Hybrid Memory Architecture unlocks today’s hardware to deliver unimaginable performance and value for the most demanding data workloads—from the edge, to the core, to the cloud.

If you're ready to shape the future of data, join us.

We are looking for a talented and motivated Performance & Reliability Engineer to join our growing engineering team. In this role, you will support efforts to characterize and improve the performance and reliability of Aerospike’s graph database. Working alongside experienced engineers, you’ll help ensure the product meets the high standards of efficiency and scalability required by our enterprise customers.

This is a great opportunity for someone with strong systems knowledge and a keen interest in databases to deepen their expertise in distributed systems and performance engineering.

Key Responsibilities

Collaboration:
Partner with the Product R&D team to understand performance goals and contribute to implementing improvements throughout the development cycle.

Workload Design & System Characterization:
Design and execute performance workloads that simulate real-world usage patterns to help identify bottlenecks and assess system reliability. Assist in benchmarking and performance evaluations across releases.

Troubleshooting & Issue Analysis:
Assist in investigating performance-related issues raised through internal testing or customer feedback. Support root-cause analysis and resolution efforts with guidance from senior team members.

Performance Tuning:
Help analyze system behavior under load and support efforts to optimize query execution, indexing, and data retrieval in the graph database.

Architecture Awareness:
Contribute ideas and feedback during design discussions, focusing on how proposed changes could impact performance and scalability.

Documentation:
Document performance tuning steps, benchmarking results, and lessons learned to help standardize best practices across the team.

Customer Engagement:
Occasionally support performance-related discussions with customers and field engineers to understand production challenges and operational needs.

Learning & Development:
Stay informed about relevant trends and techniques in performance engineering and graph databases. Be proactive in applying new insights to ongoing projects.

Requirements

Technical Skills:

• Proficiency in at least one programming language (e.g., Java, C/C++, Go).

• Hands-on experience with distributed systems or large-scale services, preferably in a production setting.

• Familiarity with database concepts such as indexing, query execution, and performance tuning.

• Experience with observability tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana); exposure to eBPF is a plus.

• Comfort working in Linux/Unix environments.

• Familiarity with deployment automation tools such as Ansible, Terraform, or Kubernetes.

• Exposure to database client usage and performance benchmarking.

• Experience with a modern NoSQL database (Aerospike or similar) is a plus.

Soft Skills:

• Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills, with an eagerness to dive into complex problems.

• Effective communicator—both written and verbal—with the ability to collaborate across engineering and product teams.

• Team-oriented mindset with a growth attitude and a willingness to learn from others.

Aerospike is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to providing an environment free from discrimination on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, non-disqualifying physical or mental disability, national origin, veteran status, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. Join us at Aerospike and be part of a dynamic team that is shaping the future of data management. Salary Range for California Based Applicants: [$140,000 - $175,000] (actual compensation will be determined based on experience, location, and other factors permitted by law)