Staff Engineer SQL Engine

About the role

Yugabyte is the company behind YugabyteDB, the AI-ready, multi-modal, distributed PostgreSQL database for cloud-native apps. Trusted by industry leaders including Shopify, Paramount+, GM, Kroger, Fiserv, and NPCI, YugabyteDB has been deployed in over 100 countries and powers more than 5 million clusters worldwide.

Together, our hard-working team of experts and our industry-leading technology are uniquely positioned to meet the demands of modern workloads: geo-distributed, ultra-resilient, and built to scale without limits.

Our Yugabeings (distributed, like our database) span 12+ countries and multiple time zones, sharing expertise from diverse backgrounds and industries.

Staff Engineer – Languages & Relational Technologies (LRT)

Role Overview

As a Staff Engineer on the Languages & Relational Technologies (LRT) team, you will help design, build, and scale core database features that power YugabyteDB’s SQL layer. You will collaborate with cross-functional engineering teams to solve complex problems affecting distributed query planning, execution, and performance, ensuring YugabyteDB remains robust, reliable, and performance at scale.

Key Responsibilities

- Lead the design, development, testing, and release of new database features and enhancements in YugabyteDB.

- Write high-quality C/C++ code (and contribute in other languages as needed) with comprehensive automated tests; participate actively in code reviews.

- Identify and implement performance improvements — including plan optimization, batching/parallelism, and advanced push-downs to data nodes.

- Improve database scalability and throughput as cluster sizes and transaction volumes grow.

- Contribute to the open source YugabyteDB project and help strengthen our distributed SQL capabilities across releases.

- Troubleshoot and resolve correctness, stability, and performance issues in complex distributed query planning and execution paths.

- Mentor and influence other engineers in best practices for database internals, distributed systems, and performance-oriented software development.

Required Qualifications

- 8+ years of professional experience in software engineering, with a strong foundation in compiled languages such as C/C++.

- Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Computer Science (or related field), or equivalent practical experience.

- Deep understanding of systems engineering fundamentals, including operating systems, distributed systems, and databases.

- Experience with database internals, compilers, or query planning/optimization is a strong plus.

- Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to operate effectively in a collaborative, distributed team environment

Preferred Skills

- Experience building large-scale distributed systems and transactional engines.

- Familiarity with PostgreSQL internals or other relational database engines.