Senior Software Engineer

About LanceDBLanceDB is the preeminent data platform for multimodal AI use cases. From hyper-scalable vector search to advanced retrieval for RAG, from streaming training data to interactive exploration of large-scale AI datasets, LanceDB is the best foundation for your AI application, and powers some of the most groundbreaking applications and challenging requirements today.About The RoleWe’re looking for a Senior Software Engineer to help expand the reach of Lance and LanceDB within the broader data infrastructure ecosystem. You’ll work at the intersection of high-performance computing, big data, and open-source systems. You will contribute scale and performance improvements, integrations with the wider data and AI ecosystem, simplifying distributed operations, and usability and maintainability enhancements.You’ll be responsible forDesigning and maintaining efficient distributed Lance dataset operationsBuilding efficient indices to enable predicate pushdown and accelerate queries in Spark, Ray, or TrinoWorking on table formats, data encodings, and various aspects of the Lance format in RustDriving open-source community efforts to integrate the Lance format with Spark, Hive Metastore, Presto, Trino, Ray, and other data infrastructure systemsOperating and improving internal data processing infrastructurePromoting the Lance format in open-source communities and at Big Data conferencesRequirements10+ years of experience building high-performance databases, big data systems, or large-scale data servicesDeep understanding of internals of open-source Big Data or AI training systems (e.g., Hadoop, Spark, Flink, Ray, Iceberg, Delta Lake, Hudi, ClickHouse, Trino, Presto, PyTorch, or JAX)Strong experience with high-performance computing in C++, Java, and/or ScalaExperience with Rust (or willingness to learn it)Proven ability to move fast, work independently, and collaborate with a high-caliber teamNice to HaveContributor, committer, or PMC member in Apache or other large open-source projectsExperience with Apache Arrow, DataFusion, Parquet, Iceberg, or Delta LakeTrack record of driving large features or integrations in distributed systemsStrong community presence and passion for open-source collaborationWhat We OfferA key role shaping an open-source project with real production usageRemote-first team with flexible hoursCompetitive compensation, equity, and benefitsGenerous learning budget and support for open-source contributionsWhy Join UsYou’ll join a world-class team of open-source builders, including co-authors of pandas, and contributors to HDFS, Arrow, Iceberg, and HBase. You’ll collaborate on systems that power next-generation AI workloads while shaping how LanceDB operates and scales production environments.