Database Research Scientist
$175k - $235k • Remote • United States • FullTime
Posted 15d ago
Job Location
United States
Tech Stack
Remote Work Policy
Fully remote
Employment Type
FullTime
Categories
Applied AI Engineer
About the job
ClickHouse Labs is an applied research group focused on identifying and solving challenging problems in database systems, with a goal of advancing the state of the art and translating research into real-world system improvements. As a Research Scientist, you will tackle high-impact problems at the intersection of database systems, distributed systems, AI, and systems software engineering. You will collaborate with experienced researchers and engineers on a broad range of topics, including query optimization, execution engines, distributed systems, and emerging agentic workloads, working with leading open-source systems like ClickHouse and PostgreSQL. Your work will involve investigating performance bottlenecks, developing new algorithms and system designs, and evaluating them under realistic conditions, with opportunities to publish your work and contribute to open-source projects.
Responsibilities
- Conduct applied research to advance the performance, scalability, reliability, and functionality of open-source database management systems.
- Design and evaluate new algorithms, data structures, and system architectures for database systems research areas.
- Develop research prototypes and production-grade implementations, and integrate successful techniques into production systems.
- Collaborate with engineers to identify research problems and translate research results into practical system improvements.
- Analyze large-scale database workloads and telemetry to identify bottlenecks and optimization opportunities.
- Design and conduct experiments and benchmarks to evaluate new techniques.
- Communicate research results through technical reports, open-source contributions, and publications at leading venues.
- Contribute to the technical direction of ClickHouse Labs by identifying emerging research opportunities.
Requirements
- Masters/Ph.D. in Computer Science, Data Science, or related field, with research experience in databases, distributed systems, systems software, or machine learning systems.
- Strong publication record in leading peer-reviewed research venues relevant to databases or systems.
- Strong programming and systems-development background, including experience with database internals or large systems codebases.
- Proficiency in systems programming using C, C++, Rust, Zig, or a comparable low-level programming language.
- Strong analytical, experimental, problem-solving, and technical communication skills.
- Experience developing or operating database systems in cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure).
- Familiarity with large language models, reinforcement learning, learned optimization, or ML/systems intersection techniques.
- Experience contributing to large open-source systems projects, particularly database engines, distributed systems, compilers, or storage systems.
- Familiarity with modern systems-development and verification tooling, including formal specification or model-checking frameworks.
- Proven track record in optimizing database systems via hardware acceleration (GPU, FPGA, CXL) using frameworks like CUDA, SYCL, ROCm.
Benefits
- Flexible work environment - globally distributed and remote-friendly.
- Employer contributions towards healthcare.
- Equity in the company (stock options).
- Flexible time off (US) / generous entitlement (other countries).
- USD$500 Home office setup for remote employees.
- Global Gatherings and company-wide offsites.