Database Engineer — Storage & Query Execution

About the role

What we do

ParadeDB is a Postgres-native alternative to Elasticsearch. We build state-of-the-art search (full-text, vector, and hybrid) and columnar analytics as a Postgres extension.

Companies like Modern Treasury, BILT Rewards, Alibaba Cloud, and many others use ParadeDB to:

- Eliminate ETL/change data capture tools

- Add transactional guarantees to their search indexes

- Perform JOINs on their search data

- Unify their search & transactional stack for agentic workloads

We're a small, focused team of engineers dedicated to creating an inclusive and enjoyable work environment. We’re primarily distributed across the United States and Canada, with a small office in San Francisco. We’re a Series A company with a flat structure, strong backing from investors, and plenty of room for growth.

What we want

We're looking for a database engineer to join our team full-time. The ideal candidate should have:

- A solid foundation in database systems and internals

- Meaningful experience working on databases, query engines, storage engines, indexing systems, or similarly complex infrastructure software

- Proficiency in systems programming with C/C++/Rust/Zig and the ability to navigate large, complex codebases effectively (bonus points for Rust)

- Experience designing, profiling, optimizing, and debugging systems with a focus on performance, scalability, and maintainability

- Experience with Postgres internals, database extensions, or related systems is a plus

- Familiarity with query optimization, vectorized execution, columnar storage, or analytical query processing is a plus

- Familiarity with search systems is a plus

- Familiarity with technologies such as Tantivy, Apache DataFusion, Arrow, Parquet, or pgrx is a plus

- Contributions to high-quality open-source projects are a plus

- Prior experience at a small, high-performing startup is a plus

We're seeking someone creative, independent, and excited by difficult technical challenges. You'll bring thoughtful opinions, learn quickly, engage directly with customers, and help us build a world-class product.

What you want

- You want to be part of the core team of a fast-growing infrastructure startup

- You want to wear many hats and interface directly with customers

- You’re passionate about databases, query engines, search technologies, and data systems

- You’re excited about diving deep into the internals of Postgres and writing high-performance, safe Rust code

- You’re excited to build state-of-the-art search and analytical capabilities on top of Postgres

- You’re excited to learn about, draw inspiration from, and contribute to systems like Tantivy, Apache DataFusion, PostgreSQL, Parquet, and Arrow

- You believe in open-source and want to contribute to building a sustainable open-source business