ByteDance · 4 months ago
Senior Software Engineer / Researcher, AI-Native database systems
San Jose, CA
Full-time
Onsite
Mid, Senior Level
$187K/yr - $438K/yr
2+ years expByteDance is a tech company known for its innovative products like TikTok and CapCut. They are seeking a Senior Software Engineer / Researcher to join their database R&D team, focusing on building AI-native database systems that support their global infrastructure and enhance intelligent systems across various applications.
ContentData MiningFoundational AIInternetSocial Media
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
Qualification
Required
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
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
Benefits
Medical, dental, and vision insurance
401(k) savings plan with company match
Paid parental leave
Short-term and long-term disability coverage
Life insurance
Wellbeing benefits
10 paid holidays per year
10 paid sick days per year
17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure)
Company
ByteDance
ByteDance is a technology company that develops content creation platforms and services.
10001+ employees
H1B Sponsorship
ByteDance has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (1350)
2024 (1123)
2023 (775)
2022 (487)
2021 (417)
2020 (245)
Funding
Current Stage
Late StageTotal Funding
$9.8BKey Investors
Capital TodayG42Tiger Global Management
2025-11-20Secondary Market· $300M
2024-07-25Secondary Market
2023-03-14Secondary Market· $100M
Leadership Team
Jochen Bischoff
Head of Global Business Solutions - Africa
Matty Lin
General Manager, Global Business Solutions, KR
Recent News
2026-01-08
Company data provided by crunchbase