Senior Software Engineer / Researcher, AI-Native Database Systems

3 Days ago • 2-8 Years • Artificial Intelligence • $184,300 PA - $337,250 PA

Job Summary

Job Description

ByteDance's database R&D team seeks a Senior Software Engineer/Researcher to build AI-native database systems. This role involves architecting and implementing databases integrating structured, unstructured, and vectorized data; designing storage engines optimized for embedding ingestion and real-time AI interaction; building scalable vector search systems; developing AI-augmented query processors using LLMs; collaborating on RAG infrastructure and LLM agent memory backends; and driving innovations in learned index structures and AI-integrated transaction systems. The successful candidate will have strong systems or AI research experience, expertise in database systems or machine learning, and proficiency in C++, Rust, or Go. Experience with open-source systems like Faiss or Milvus is preferred.
Must have:
  • Architect and implement AI-native databases
  • Design optimized storage engines
  • Build scalable vector search systems
  • Develop AI-augmented query processors
  • Collaborate on RAG infrastructure
  • Strong coding skills (C++, Rust, Go)
  • Experience in core database systems or ML
Good to have:
  • Experience with Faiss, Milvus, etc.
  • Publications at top-tier conferences
  • Familiarity with GCP, AWS, or Azure
  • Contributions to RAG or self-tuning databases
Perks:
  • Medical, dental, and vision insurance
  • 401(k) savings plan with company match
  • Paid parental leave
  • Paid holidays and sick days
  • Paid Personal Time

Job Details

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. About the Role 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.
Qualifications
Minimum Qualification - 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.
Job Information
【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Annually)

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $184300 - $337250 annually.

Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units.

Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others. Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure).

The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.

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

Similar Jobs

Techland - Lead Level Designer

Techland

Wrocław, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, Poland (On-Site)
4 Months ago
Limbic Entertainment - Head of Design

Limbic Entertainment

Berlin, Berlin, Germany (Hybrid)
1 Month ago
Valve corporation - Level Designer

Valve corporation

Bellevue, Washington, United States (On-Site)
5 Months ago
Rivos - CPU Physical Design - Full time

Rivos

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India (On-Site)
6 Months ago
Ubisoft - Level Design Director

Ubisoft

Bordeaux, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France (On-Site)
1 Month ago
Genies - Lead Machine Learning Engineer, 3D Gen AI & Graphics

Genies

San Mateo, California, United States (On-Site)
1 Month ago
Bragg - AI/ML Engineer

Bragg

Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia (Hybrid)
2 Weeks ago
NVIDIA - Senior Solutions Architect, Networking - Cloud Service Providers

NVIDIA

California, United States (Hybrid)
4 Weeks ago
Google - Software Engineering Manager, AI Powered Data

Google

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India (On-Site)
2 Days ago
Google - Engineering Manager, Physical Design

Google

Sunnyvale, California, United States (On-Site)
2 Weeks ago

Get notifed when new similar jobs are uploaded

Similar Skill Jobs

Amber - Junior Puzzle Level Designer (Project Based)

Amber

Brazil (On-Site)
9 Months ago
SMU Guildhall - Faculty - Video Game Development

SMU Guildhall

Dallas, Texas, United States (On-Site)
7 Months ago
NVIDIA - Clock Design Engineer

NVIDIA

Tel Aviv-Yafo, Tel Aviv District, Israel (Hybrid)
2 Months ago
Google - Software Engineer II, Cloud Networking

Google

Tel Aviv-Yafo, Tel Aviv District, Israel (On-Site)
2 Weeks ago
Techland - Junior Quest Designer

Techland

Warsaw, Masovian Voivodeship, Poland (On-Site)
23 Hours ago
Enphase Energy - Sr. Backend resource

Enphase Energy

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India (On-Site)
4 Months ago
Amber - 3D Level Designer (Project Based)

Amber

Brazil (On-Site)
9 Months ago
Firesprite - Junior Narrative Designer

Firesprite

Liverpool, England, United Kingdom (Hybrid)
1 Day ago
ByteDance - Senior Software Engineer / Researcher, AI-Native Database Systems

ByteDance

San Jose, California, United States (On-Site)
3 Days ago
Kojima Productions - Level Designer

Kojima Productions

Tokyo, Japan (On-Site)
5 Months ago

Get notifed when new similar jobs are uploaded

Jobs in Seattle, Washington, United States

Epic Games - Audio Director

Epic Games

Cary, North Carolina, United States (On-Site)
2 Weeks ago
Games For Love - Scholars Program Coordinator (No Compensation - Remote - Volunteer)

Games For Love

Lynnwood, Washington, United States (Remote)
8 Months ago
Aristocrat Gaming - Senior Systems Reliability Engineer (SRE)

Aristocrat Gaming

Austin, Texas, United States (Hybrid)
1 Month ago
Scale AI - Engagement Manager, Gen AI

Scale AI

San Francisco, California, United States (On-Site)
1 Day ago
Sandbox VR - Retail Associate

Sandbox VR

Emeryville, California, United States (On-Site)
6 Months ago
NVIDIA - System Products Memory Solutions Engineer

NVIDIA

Santa Clara, California, United States (On-Site)
3 Weeks ago
Disney - Quality Engineer - IA/Project Hire

Disney

Lake Buena Vista, Florida, United States (On-Site)
20 Hours ago
Riot Games - Senior Technical Artist (Rendering) - VALORANT, UI/UX

Riot Games

United States (On-Site)
2 Weeks ago
Scanline VFX - Research Intern (Summer 2025)

Scanline VFX

Los Angeles, California, United States (Hybrid)
5 Months ago
Univision - Creative Project Lead

Univision

Los Angeles, California, United States (On-Site)
19 Hours ago

Get notifed when new similar jobs are uploaded

Artificial Intelligence Jobs

Genies - Machine Learning Engineer: 3D Generative AI

Genies

San Mateo, California, United States (Remote)
6 Months ago
Eleven Labs - GTM AI Automations Engineer

Eleven Labs

United Kingdom (Remote)
1 Week ago
Google - Applied Machine Learning Engineer

Google

Taipei City, Taiwan (On-Site)
2 Weeks ago
Google - Customer Engineer, Looker, Public Sector

Google

Austin, Texas, United States (On-Site)
2 Days ago
Meta - Research Scientist, Computer Vision for Generative AI (PhD)

Meta

New York, New York, United States (On-Site)
5 Months ago
ByteDance - Cloud Native Engineer, ARK Large Model Platform (Singapore)

ByteDance

Singapore (On-Site)
6 Months ago
Google - Senior Staff Software Engineer, BigQuery Generative AI

Google

Kirkland, Washington, United States (On-Site)
2 Days ago
Meta - Research Scientist Intern, Smart Glasses in Wearables AI (PhD)

Meta

Redmond, Washington, United States (On-Site)
5 Months ago
Google - Software Engineer III, AI/ML, Google Ads

Google

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India (On-Site)
2 Weeks ago
AI Fund - Head of Engineering

AI Fund

United States (Remote)
3 Weeks ago

Get notifed when new similar jobs are uploaded

About The Company

Where imagination meets innovation, delivering limitless gaming experiences.

San Diego, California, United States (On-Site)

San Jose, California, United States (On-Site)

Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (On-Site)

New York, New York, United States (On-Site)

San Jose, California, United States (On-Site)

San Jose, California, United States (On-Site)

Seattle, Washington, United States (On-Site)

View All Jobs

Get notified when new jobs are added by ByteDance

Level Up Your Career in Game Development!

Transform Your Passion into Profession with Our Comprehensive Courses for Aspiring Game Developers.

Job Common Plug