Software Engineer, Database Systems
About the Team: The Database Systems team specializes in high-performance distributed databases. Our team built Rockset, the real-time search, analytics, and vector database that powers all vector search and retrieval augmented generation (RAG) at OpenAI.
What this role actually needs.
About the Team: The Database Systems team specializes in high-performance distributed databases. Our team built Rockset, the real-time search, analytics, and vector database that powers all vector search and retrieval augmented generation (RAG) at OpenAI. 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.) Company context: OpenAI builds frontier AI systems, research infrastructure, and applied products for developers, enterprises, and global users.
Day-to-day expectations
OpenAI lists these responsibilities for the Software Engineer, Database Systems role.
- 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
What a strong candidate brings
These requirements are extracted from the source listing and normalized for UpJobz readers.
- 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.)
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Source: jobs.ashbyhq.com · Source ID: 2b5e8e15-7952-4170-a927-2ad68e318ed6 · Confidence: 97/100 · Last checked: May 7, 2026
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