Software Engineering Manager, Database
Hands-on Engineering Manager to lead a small systems team building SmithDB, LangChain's purpose-built storage and query layer for AI observability at massive scale. Write production Rust, drive architecture and performance, manage the team, and own the technical roadmap.
About the job
What you'll do
- Write and review production Rust code across ingestion, query execution, and storage layers
- Lead architectural decisions on storage format, compaction, indexing, and query planning
- Drive performance investigations using memory and CPU profiling tools; own the path from profiling to shipped fix
- Design and harden the distributed deployment of SmithDB services on Kubernetes (multi-tenant, high-throughput, low-latency)
- Contribute to cloud object store integrations (S3, GCS, Azure Blob) and set the standard for how SmithDB manages data at rest and in flight
- Build and maintain observability for the engine itself: metrics, tracing, debug tooling
- Manage a small but growing team of systems engineers: set goals, run 1:1s, provide technical mentorship, and grow careers
- Own the SmithDB technical roadmap in partnership with LangSmith product and engineering leadership
- Communicate progress, risks, and tradeoffs clearly to the broader organization: you write concise, decision-ready updates
What you'll bring
- 7+ years in systems or database engineering, with at least 2 years in a technical lead or engineering management role
- Production Rust experience — you can write it, review it, and have opinions on how to structure it at scale
- Deep understanding of database or storage engine internals: query execution, storage layouts, indexing, compaction
- Proficiency in systems performance analysis: memory allocators, CPU hotspots, lock contention, async runtimes (Tokio)
- Experience deploying and operating distributed services on Kubernetes in a production, multi-tenant environment
- Familiarity with cloud object storage (S3-compatible APIs, consistency models, cost/performance tradeoffs)
- Proven track record of managing engineers — you can recruit, retain, and level-up a team without losing your technical edge
Nice-to-have
- Experience building or contributing to columnar storage formats (Parquet, Arrow), OLAP query engines, or time-series stores
- Background in observability infrastructure or tracing pipelines (OpenTelemetry, ClickHouse, Prometheus)
- Experience scaling a system from early-stage to hundreds of billions / trillions of records
Compensation
Salary Range: $215,000-$260,000 USD Compensation includes base salary, variable compensation for relevant roles, meaningful equity, benefits, and perks. Benefits include medical, dental, and vision coverage, flexible vacation, a 401(k) plan, meals on in-office days in the US and more.
Skills
Rust, Kubernetes, S3, Gcs, Azure Blob, Parquet, Arrow, Olap, OpenTelemetry, ClickHouse, Prometheus, Tokio
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