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Software Engineering Manager, Database (SmithDB)

LangChain· Engineering
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San Francisco, CA$240k - $300kFull-timePosted 3mo ago

About the role

Hands-on Engineering Manager for the SmithDB team, leading a greenfield, production-ready storage and query layer for AI observability and evaluation. Combines writing production Rust, architecture decisions, and people management to grow a small systems-focused team.

Responsibilities

  • 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

Qualifications

  • 7+ years in systems or database engineering, with at least 2 years in a technical lead or engineering management role
  • Production Rust experience — you can write it, review it, and have opinions on how to structure it at scale
  • Deep understanding of database or storage engine internals: query execution, storage layouts, indexing, compaction
  • Proficiency in systems performance analysis: memory allocators, CPU hotspots, lock contention, async runtimes (Tokio)
  • Experience deploying and operating distributed services on Kubernetes in a production, multi-tenant environment
  • Familiarity with cloud object storage (S3-compatible APIs, consistency models, cost/performance tradeoffs)
  • Proven track record of managing engineers — you can recruit, retain, and level-up a team without losing your technical edge

Skills

Required:RustSystem designPerformance analysisKubernetesCloud object storage

Benefits

  • medical, dental, and vision coverage
  • flexible vacation
  • a 401(k) plan
  • meals on in-office days in the US and more
Last updated Oct 14, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About LangChain

Engineer reliable agents

LangChain provides the engineering platform and open source frameworks developers use to build, test, and deploy reliable AI agents.

AI agentsagent engineeringbrex-fastest-growing-2025liquid-ai-recruiting-targetopen source frameworksplatform
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