Senior Software Engineer

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.

What You’ll Do

As a Software Engineer, you will work on a broad range of technical and product challenges across the  YugabyteDB ecosystem and Meko (mekodata.ai). The problems you work on will evolve over time - and that is intentional.

Meko is our AI-focused product initiative, giving engineers an opportunity to work hands-on with modern AI technologies and build real-world AI-powered experiences.

You will:

• Design, build, debug, and improve software across different parts of the YugabyteDB and Meko ecosystems.
• Work across areas such as distributed systems, databases, cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, APIs, developer tooling, automation, and AI.
• Contribute to building and evolving Meko, including AI-powered products, experiences, and developer capabilities.
• Investigate complex technical problems and drive them from problem identification through implementation and delivery.
• Prototype new ideas, evaluate emerging technologies, and turn promising experiments into production-quality solutions.
• Identify opportunities to improve engineering productivity, reliability, automation, and customer experience.
• Use AI and AI-assisted development  to accelerate engineering workflows, troubleshoot complex problems, automate repetitive tasks, and explore new product capabilities.
• Collaborate with engineers, product managers, architects, support, and customers to understand problems and develop practical solutions.
• Take ownership of projects with ambiguous requirements and bring clarity, structure, and momentum to them.
• Learn new technologies and domains quickly and apply them to real-world problems.

What We’re Looking For

Technical Skills

We are looking for a generalist engineer with strong fundamentals  rather than someone who knows only one technology deeply.

You should have:

• Strong programming and software engineering fundamentals.
• Experience with one or more languages such as Python, Go, Java, C++, or Rust.
• Good understanding of several areas such as:
  • Distributed systems
  • Databases and data management
  • Cloud infrastructure
  • Containers and Kubernetes
  • Linux and systems engineering
  • Observability, debugging, and performance
  • APIs and application development
• Experience building and operating production-quality software.
• Strong problem-solving and debugging skills.
• Ability to understand unfamiliar codebases and technologies quickly.
• Familiarity with modern AI/LLM technologies  and an interest in applying them to engineering and/or product problems.
• Comfort working across the stack when the problem requires it.

Experience with modern frontend technologies such as JavaScript/TypeScript, React, HTML, and CSS  is a plus, particularly for engineers interested in building end-to-end product experiences.

You don’t need to be an expert in every technology listed above. Curiosity, strong fundamentals, technical breadth, and the ability to learn quickly are more important than matching every item.

Growth Mindset & Agility

We value engineers who actively seek to grow and are comfortable operating in an environment where priorities and problems evolve.

You should:

• Be excited about learning technologies outside your current area of expertise.
• Be comfortable saying “I don’t know” and then figuring it out.
• Seek feedback and use it to improve.
• Treat difficult problems as opportunities to learn.
• Experiment, iterate, and learn from failures.
• Move quickly from idea → prototype → feedback → implementation.
• Proactively identify problems and opportunities rather than waiting for them to be assigned.

Communication & Collaboration

Technical ability alone isn’t enough for this role.

We are looking for someone who:

• Communicates clearly and proactively.
• Can explain complex technical concepts to different audiences.
• Works effectively with engineering and non-engineering teams.
• Shares knowledge and helps others succeed.
• Can constructively challenge existing approaches and contribute their own ideas.
• Is comfortable working with ambiguity and changing priorities.

We particularly value candidates who can demonstrate strong communication, collaboration, and adaptability through their previous work and experiences.

AI & Innovation

AI is changing both how software is built and how products are created.

Through YugabyteDB and Meko, you will have opportunities to explore and apply AI in practical engineering and product scenarios.

This could include:

• Using AI coding assistants and agents to improve engineering productivity.
• Building AI-powered developer and operational tooling.
• Exploring LLMs, AI agents, MCP, RAG, and related technologies.
• Building AI-powered product capabilities through Meko.
• Applying AI to database operations, troubleshooting, observability, and automation.
• Identifying new ways AI can improve the YugabyteDB and Meko user experience.

You don’t need to be an AI specialist. You need to be curious about AI and willing to learn, experiment, and apply it.

What Success Looks Like

You will be successful if you:

• Take ownership of ambiguous problems and drive them to resolution.
• Become productive quickly in unfamiliar technical areas.
• Deliver meaningful improvements across technology and team boundaries.
• Proactively identify opportunities and turn them into outcomes.
• Contribute meaningfully to both YugabyteDB and Meko.
• Communicate effectively and collaborate across teams.
• Continuously expand your technical breadth and depth.
• Use emerging technologies, including AI, to improve how we build and operate software.

Why This Role?

This role is for engineers who don’t want their growth to be constrained by a narrow job description.

You will work on challenging problems involving distributed databases, cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, developer tooling, AI, and large-scale systems.

At the same time, you will have the opportunity to help build Meko, an AI-focused product initiative, and gain hands-on experience with technologies such as LLMs, AI agents, MCP, RAG, and AI-native applications.

The role combines deep technology with product building, giving you the opportunity to develop breadth across systems, cloud, applications, and AI while working with a highly collaborative engineering team.

If you are curious, adaptable, technically strong, proactive, and excited by problems that don’t always have obvious answers, we’d like to hear from you.

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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