Senior Research Engineer​/Scientist -AI Databases

Position: Senior Research Engineer / Scientist -AI for Databases

Senior Research Engineer / Scientist

-AI for Databases

Location:

Seattle

Team:

Infrastructure

Employment Type:

Regular

Job Code:

A76809

Responsibilities

• 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.

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.

Qualifications

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.

Job Information

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $177688 - $341734 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 increasing accruals by tenure).

The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.

For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates:

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:

• Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised