Research Engineer​/Scientist -AI Databases

Overview

Location:

San Jose

Team:
Infrastructure

Employment Type:

Regular

Job Code: A254386A

About the Team:
The Infrastructure System Lab is a hybrid research and engineering team dedicated to building the next generation of AI-native data infrastructure. Operating at the crossroads of databases, large-scale systems, and AI, the team innovates across multiple domains, including advanced Vector

DBs and multi-modal databases for large-scale retrieval and reasoning, intelligent infrastructure optimization using machine learning, LLM-based developer tools like NL2

SQL and NL2

Chart, and high-performance cache systems for distributed storage and LLM inference. The lab is deeply collaborative, with researchers and engineers working side by side to turn groundbreaking ideas into production-ready systems. Their work is deployed at scale, powering products used by millions, and frequently shared through publications and open-source contributions.

About the Role:

We are looking for a passionate and skilled professional to join our AI4DB team, where artificial intelligence meets cutting-edge database technology. In this role, you will design and implement intelligent systems that improve the performance, scalability, and usability of modern databases. Your work will span query optimization, indexing strategies, workload forecasting, and the development of self-managing databases. This role offers the chance to solve complex, high-impact problems at the intersection of AI, systems, and software engineering, while collaborating with a top-tier team.

You ll have opportunities to publish, contribute to open-source, attend leading conferences, and benefit from competitive compensation, strong research support, and an innovation-driven environment.

Responsibilities and Qualifications are listed below.

• Conduct research and development in applying AI/ML techniques to database management systems.
• Develop intelligent algorithms for tasks such as query planning, indexing, storage management, and workload prediction/scheduling.
• Collaborate with data infrastructure and engineering teams to integrate AI models into production systems.
• Analyze large-scale datasets from database workloads to uncover optimization opportunities.
• Publish findings in top-tier conferences and journals (VLDB, SIGMOD, ICDE, NeurIPS, etc.).
• Contribute to open-source projects or internal tools supporting AI-enhanced databases.

• Minimum Qualifications
• PhD in Computer Science, Data Science or a related field with a focus on databases, systems, or machine learning.
• Strong publication record in top-tier venues (e.g., SIGMOD, VLDB, ICDE, NeurIPS, etc.) related to the AI4DB area.
• Strong background in database internals (e.g., Postgre
  
  SQL, MySQL, or any modern cloud-native databases or Big Data platform).
• Hands-on experience with machine learning frameworks (e.g. XGBoost, Light
  
  GBM, Tensor Flow, PyTorch, scikit-learn).
• Preferred Qualifications
• Proficiency in Python, C++, or Java.
• Experience with cloud database platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) is a plus.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills.
• Familiarity with LLM, reinforcement learning, neural architecture search, or automated database tuning.

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $136800 - $359720 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…