Staff Engineer

Posted: 2026-02-24

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.

Staff Engineer – Distributed Storage & Transactions (DST)

About Yugabyte

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 $150B by 2030. 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.

Yugabyte offers a culture of innovation, ownership, and technical excellence, with opportunities to impact a cutting-edge distributed SQL database used by global enterprises. As a member of the DST team, you’ll help meet growing demand for high-scale, high-performance, globally distributed transactional workloads — instrumental to our product’s success.

As a Staff Engineer on the Distributed Storage & Transactions (DST) team, you will play a critical role in designing, building, and scaling the core distributed storage, replication, and transaction foundations of YugabyteDB.

You will work on some of the most challenging problems in distributed systems — including consistency, durability, fault tolerance, performance, and scalability — while collaborating closely with query layer, platform, and cloud teams. This role is ideal for engineers who thrive in low-level systems work and want to shape the future of a globally distributed database.

- Lead the design, development, testing, and delivery of core storage and replication features in YugabyteDB.

- Write high-quality C/C++ code with comprehensive automated tests; actively participate in design discussions and code reviews.

- Troubleshoot and resolve correctness, stability, and performance issues in complex distributed storage and transactional subsystems.

- Improve database scalability and throughput as cluster sizes, data volumes, and transaction rates continue to grow.

- Build and streamline database management operations, including:

- Horizontal cluster scale-out

- Incremental and point-in-time backups

- Online schema and index operations

- Rolling upgrades and blue-green deployments

- Identify and implement performance improvements across the storage engine, transaction processing, and replication layers.

- Contribute to the open-source YugabyteDB project, helping evolve its storage architecture and operational reliability.

- Mentor and technically influence other engineers in distributed systems design, performance engineering, and systems-level debugging.

- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a strong foundation in systems programming using C/C++.

- Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Computer Science (or related field), or equivalent practical experience.

- Deep understanding of distributed systems fundamentals, including:

- Replication and consensus

- Transactions and consistency models

- Fault tolerance and recovery

- Experience working on storage engines, databases, or other infrastructure-level systems.

- Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to operate effectively in a collaborative, distributed team environment

- Hands-on experience with distributed storage systems, transactional engines, or consensus protocols.

- Familiarity with LSM-tree based storage engines, WALs, snapshots, or compaction strategies.

- Experience with PostgreSQL internals or other relational database engines is a strong plus.

- Prior contributions to open-source systems or database projects.