Senior Software Engineer - Database
Description VAST Data is looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join our growing team! This is a great opportunity to join one of the fastest-growing infrastructure companies in history, an organization that is in the center of the hurricane being created by the revolution in artificial intelligence. Take part in the design and implementation of the internals of the next-generation hugely scalable and highly performant analytical and vector database. "VAST's data management vision is the future of the market."- Forbes VAST Data is the data platform company for the AI era. We are building the enterprise software infrastructure to capture, catalog, refine, enrich, and protect massive datasets and make them available for real-time data analysis and AI training and inference. Designed from the ground up to make AI simple to deploy and manage, VAST takes the cost and complexity out of deploying enterprise and AI infrastructure across data center, edge, and cloud. Our success has been built through intense innovation, a customer-first mentality and a team of fearless VASTronauts who leverage their skills & experiences to make real market impact. This is an opportunity to be a key contributor at a pivotal time in our company’s growth and at a pivotal point in computing history. VAST Data is looking for a Senior Backend Software Engineer to help build the engine behind the next generation of scalable, AI-native data infrastructure. In this role, you will focus on the design and development of backend services powering our massively distributed, high-performance combined analytical and vector database, a critical component of VAST's AI data platform. This is your opportunity to work at the intersection of low-level systems programming, distributed computing, and AI infrastructure—helping us push the boundaries of backend engineering for real-time, petabyte-scale data systems. What You’ll Do
- Architect and implement core backend components for a distributed vector database using C/C++
- Design highly scalable distributed data-structures and algorithms optimized for performance, concurrency, and fault tolerance
- Develop backend services that enable fast search, efficient indexing, and real-time analytics over massive datasets
- Optimize system performance across multi-threaded and multi-node environments
- Ensure low-latency, high-throughput data access and manipulation across global deployments
- Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to translate backend capabilities into real-world impact
Requirements
What We’re Looking For Must Haves:
- 5+ years of experience in backend engineering, with strong proficiency in low-level C and C++
- Hands-on experience designing and building distributed backend systems or infrastructure at scale
- Experience with distributed data-structures, algorithms and system reliability patterns
- Expertise in multi-threaded programming, memory management, and performance tuning
- Proven track record of backend work on high-throughput databases, vector stores, or real-time processing engines
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience
Nice to Haves:
- Experience building or optimizing analytical or vector databases
- Familiarity with query engine internals, indexing techniques, or storage layer optimizations
- Knowledge of Python or Java for integration or tooling
- Bachelor's, Master’s or PhD in a related technical field (distributed systems, backend architecture, database internals)