Director of Engineering, Core Database

At Yugabyte, we are on a mission to become the default transactional database for enterprises building cloud-native applications. YugabyteDB is our PostgreSQL-compatible distributed database for cloud-native apps. Resilient, scalable, and flexible, it runs on any cloud and enables developers to become instantly productive using well-known APIs.We are looking for talented and driven people to join us on our ambitious mission and help us build a lasting and impactful company.The transactional database market is estimated to grow to $64B by 2025. YugabyteDB is cloud-native by design, has on-demand horizontal scalability, and supports geographical distribution of data using built-in replication. This means that we are well-positioned to meet market demand for geo-distributed, high-scale, high-performance workloads. Join the Database Revolution at Yugabyte. Modern applications need a cloud-native database that eliminates tradeoffs and silos. YugabyteDB retains the power and familiarity of PostgreSQL by pairing its trusted API with a precision-engineered, distributed, cloud-native architecture. Even better, it’s 100% open source. Many of the world's leading enterprises are migrating from legacy RDBMSs (like Oracle, SQL Server, and DB2) to YugabyteDB, to meet their mission-critical app demands. 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 Responsibilities Technical 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. Required Experience 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). Nice-to-Have Qualifications 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. #LI-Hybrid 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. To review Yugabyte's Privacy Policy please visit Yugabyte Privacy Notice.