Software Engineering Manager, Database (SmithDB)

SmithDB is LangChain's internal database team. We're building a storage and query layer purpose-built for AI observability and evaluation. Within six months we went from idea to a production system that offers industry leading performance and scalability for agent observability data. We're a small, fast team of systems engineers tackling genuinely hard problems: storage layout, query execution, compaction, and scaling toward trillions of agent traces. We develop in Rust, run on Kubernetes, and integrate tightly with S3/GCS/Azure Blob. There are no legacy constraints; this is a greenfield system with real production load and ambitious engineering goals.

We're looking for a hands-on Engineering Manager to lead the SmithDB team. This is not a pure people-management role. You'll write production code, review PRs at the systems level, make architectural calls, and be in the weeds alongside your engineers. At the same time, you'll own team health, hiring, technical roadmap, and coordination with the broader LangSmith platform. The ideal candidate has deep systems or database engineering experience and genuinely prefers to stay technical while growing a team.

- Write and review production Rust code across ingestion, query execution, and storage layers

- Lead architectural decisions on storage format, compaction, indexing, and query planning

- Drive performance investigations using memory and CPU profiling tools; own the path from profiling to shipped fix

- Design and harden the distributed deployment of SmithDB services on Kubernetes (multi-tenant, high-throughput, low-latency)

- Contribute to cloud object store integrations (S3, GCS, Azure Blob) and set the standard for how SmithDB manages data at rest and in flight

- Build and maintain observability for the engine itself: metrics, tracing, debug tooling

- Manage a small but growing team of systems engineers: set goals, run 1:1s, provide technical mentorship, and grow careers

- Own the SmithDB technical roadmap in partnership with LangSmith product and engineering leadership

- Communicate progress, risks, and tradeoffs clearly to the broader organization: you write concise, decision-ready updates