# Software Engineer, Database Systems

**Company:** [OpenAI](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/openai)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA
**Role:** Backend Engineering
**Salary:** $230k – $385k/yr
**Experience:** 4+ years
**Skills:** C++, Distributed Systems, Kubernetes, AWS, GCP, Azure, Terraform, Linux, Prometheus, Grafana, CI/CD, Storage Engines, Indexing, Query Processing
**Posted:** 2025-07-29

> Builds and optimizes high-performance distributed database systems like Rockset, focusing on ingestion, query execution, indexing, and storage. Requires 4+ years experience in scalable systems, C++ proficiency, and cloud expertise to enhance reliability and throughput at massive scale.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Design, build, and operate high-performance distributed systems
- Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks to scale infrastructure to the next order of magnitude
- Define long-term technical direction and guide system evolution
- Collaborate with product, engineering, and research teams to deliver scalable and reliable infrastructure
- Dig deep into complex production issues across the stack
- Contribute to incident response, postmortems, and best practices for system reliability

## Requirements
- 4+ years of relevant industry experience, with 2+ years leading large scale, complex projects or teams as an engineer or tech lead
- Experience with distributed systems at scale, with a strong focus on performance, reliability, and scalability
- Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate across highly technical and cross-functional teams
- Proficiency in a systems programming language such as **C++** (our core engine is written in C++) is strongly preferred
- Fluency in cloud environments (**AWS**, **GCP**, **Azure**) and IaC tools (**Terraform** or similar)
- Experience with **Linux** systems, **CI/CD** pipelines, and modern observability stacks (**Prometheus**, **Grafana**, etc.)

## Nice-to-Haves
- Domain knowledge in areas such as databases, data systems, storage engines, indexing, and query processing

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