Software Engineering Manager, Database

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.