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.
Director of Engineering, Core Database
Yugabyte is seeking an experienced and accomplished Director of Engineering to lead key aspects of our distributed SQL database development. This leader will drive the architecture, development, and delivery of core transactional, storage, and distributed systems components, ensuring YugabyteDB maintains industry-leading performance, scalability, and resilience. They will also manage and mentor our growing team.
This role requires a mix of software architecture expertise to design and implement practical solutions, as well as the ability to work closely with developers to identify patterns and tools that simplify solution building. You will lead one or more critical engineering teams focused on the heart of YugabyteDB, bringing technical depth in database internals and distributed systems to mentor and grow a world-class engineering organization.
This position demands a blend of hands-on architectural expertise, large-scale systems design, and the ability to execute against an ambitious product roadmap, with a deep understanding of transactional databases, distributed systems, and microservice-based applications.
Role and ResponsibilitiesTechnical Strategy & Architecture: Define and drive the technical roadmap and architecture for core database components, including the storage engine (LSM/RocksDB), transactional layer, distributed consensus (RAFT), and multi-master replication (xCluster).
Engineering Execution: Own the end-to-end development, quality, performance, and operational excellence of your teams' components, ensuring deployment in cloud-native environments (e.g., Kubernetes).
Team Leadership & Mentorship: Recruit, mentor, and manage high-performing engineering teams. Foster a culture of deep technical ownership, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
Systems Scaling & Reliability: Lead projects focused on write scaling, improving concurrency (e.g., DDL concurrency), ensuring cache coherency, and achieving 99.995% availability in distributed, multi-tenant, cloud-native environments.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner closely with Product Management, Technical Leadership (TDs/CTO), and other engineering teams (Query Optimizer, QA) to define requirements and deliver integrated, impactful features.
The ideal candidate will have demonstrated senior leadership in domains directly applicable to distributed databases:
Experience: 10+ years of progressive software development experience, with at least 3+ years in a Director role managing multiple teams or critical product areas.
Database Internals Expertise: Substantial experience designing and developing core components of production-grade relational or distributed database engines (e.g., storage/access layer, buffer cache, logging, recovery, lock management, indexing, LSM).
Distributed Systems & Cloud-Native Architectures: Proven ability to design and deliver internet-scale, highly available, multi-tenant distributed systems, leveraging technologies such as Service Fabric, distributed lock managers, distributed transaction managers, and cloud object storage.
Core Programming Languages: Hands-on experience in systems programming languages, particularly C/C++ and Go.
Scalability and Performance: Direct experience resolving performance bottlenecks (e.g., range scans, nested loop joins) and re-architecting systems for massive scaling (e.g., separating log/data, multi-writer architectures).
YugabyteDB/PostgreSQL: Experience with PostgreSQL internals or PostgreSQL-compatible distributed databases.
Cloud & Kubernetes: Hands-on experience with modern public cloud infrastructure and cloud-native technologies such as Kubernetes and Prometheus.
NoSQL Databases: Familiarity with NoSQL databases.
Open Source & Research: Contributions to open-source database projects, patents, or successfully integrating research concepts (e.g., ML-based anomaly detection) into products.
Data Technologies: Experience with technologies common in the Yugabyte ecosystem, such as Apache Bookkeeper, Spark, Kafka, or other NoSQL/Graph databases (e.g., Neo4J).
We work in a hybrid model, with the team together in our Sunnyvale office 2–3 days per week.
We feel strongly about equal pay for equal work, and transparency in compensation is one way to help achieve that. The cash compensation for this role is market competitive, with a range of USD 220,000-USD 250,000, inclusive of variable/incentive for some roles. As well as equity (when applicable), and benefits including health plans, retirement plans, and unlimited paid time off (PTO). The pay range for this position is a general guideline only and not a guarantee of compensation or salary. The actual pay will vary based on factors including experience, qualifications, and skill level.
Due to the Proclamation, “Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers”, which went into effect on September 21, 2025, at this time we are no longer able to sponsor new H-1B visa petitions filed after September 21, 2025 for new hires. We are still able to consider candidates who require H-1B extensions, changes of employer, or other types of work authorization.
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Equal Employment Opportunity Statement:
As an equal opportunity employer, Yugabyte is committed to a diverse workforce. Employment decisions regarding recruitment and selection will be made without discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, gender, age, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, genetic information or characteristic, gender identity and expression, veteran status, or other non-job related characteristics or other prohibited grounds specified in applicable federal, state and local laws.
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Skills Required
- 10+ years of progressive software development experience
- At least 3+ years in a Director role managing multiple teams
- Substantial experience designing and developing core components of database engines
- Proven ability to design and deliver multi-tenant distributed systems
- Hands-on experience in systems programming languages, particularly C/C++ and Go
- Direct experience resolving performance bottlenecks and re-architecting systems for scaling
Yugabyte Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Yugabyte and has not been reviewed or approved by Yugabyte.
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Fair & Transparent Compensation — Pay is positioned as competitive for U.S. engineering roles, with total compensation described as aligned with mid-stage startup norms. Base salary ranges for mid-level engineers are framed as strong relative to the Bay Area market.
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Healthcare Strength — Health coverage is characterized as comprehensive, spanning medical, dental, and vision with high employer premium coverage in the U.S. Mental health support and low-deductible plan design are also highlighted as meaningful parts of the package.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Time-off offerings are described as broad, including unlimited PTO with typical usage levels cited and additional holiday coverage. Parental leave policies are called out as a notable component of the overall benefits mix.
Yugabyte Insights
What We Do
At Yugabyte, we're building a diverse, multi-generational company with the vision to make YugabyteDB the distributed SQL database of choice for mission-critical cloud native applications. After a decade spent modernizing their IT infrastructure and applications, we are seeing companies enter a new phase of database modernization initiatives. We aim to be their database partner on this journey.
Why Work With Us
It’s easy to claim that your company is a best place to work, but at Yugabyte we know that we are. Why? Because our Yugabeings tell us so. Being able to work with and learn from smart people all over the world, along with a sense of ownership, mentoring opportunities, and pride in a job well done. That's what being a Yugabeing is all about.
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