Senior Software Engineer (YDB Team)

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Senior Software Engineer (YDB Team) based in Portugal.

This is an opportunity to work on highly scalable infrastructure powering demanding AI and cloud workloads.
You will contribute to an open-source distributed database and storage platform at the heart of critical cloud services.
The role focuses on solving complex systems challenges through high-performance C++ engineering and advanced optimization.
You’ll work with modern hardware, including high-speed networking, NVMe storage, and data processing accelerators.
Your work will directly influence performance, reliability, scalability, and efficiency across production-grade infrastructure.
You’ll collaborate with experienced engineers in an international, fast-moving environment where technical ownership is encouraged.
This is a hands-on role for someone excited by low-level systems, distributed computing, and building infrastructure for the future of AI.

• Develop and optimize YDB components to take full advantage of modern hardware, including QLC NVMe drives, high-bandwidth network adapters, and DPUs.
• Improve performance across widely used storage technologies, including HDDs and TLC NVMe devices.
• Reengineer system components using more efficient algorithms to address complex scalability, performance, and reliability challenges.
• Design and implement high-performance, low-latency software components for heavily loaded production systems.
• Analyze system behavior and identify performance bottlenecks using profiling, debugging, and diagnostic techniques.
• Work on distributed storage and database infrastructure supporting demanding AI and cloud workloads.
• Contribute to the reliability, availability, and durability of production-grade distributed systems.
• Participate actively in incident investigation and resolution, helping identify root causes and implement lasting improvements.
• Collaborate with engineers across infrastructure, storage, networking, and AI-focused teams to deliver robust technical solutions.
• Contribute to an open-source codebase and participate in technical discussions, design decisions, and continuous improvement.
• Take ownership of engineering challenges from investigation and design through implementation, optimization, testing, and production deployment.

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional experience developing in C or C++ for highly loaded, performance-critical systems.
• Strong understanding of low-level systems concepts, including CPU caches, modern CPU atomic operations, and NUMA architectures.
• Proven experience developing high-performance and low-latency software components.
• Ability to investigate complex production issues using core dumps, flame graphs, sanitized builds, and related debugging techniques.
• Strong systems programming and performance optimization skills, with an analytical approach to diagnosing bottlenecks.
• Experience with on-disk data structures such as LSM trees or B+ trees is a strong advantage.
• Hands-on experience with tools such as perf , VTune, bpftrace, or gdb is desirable.
• Knowledge of storage algorithms, including erasure coding and checksumming, is a plus.
• Understanding of storage device internals, particularly NVMe and HDD technologies.
• Familiarity with Linux kernel development and technologies such as SPDK, DPDK, libaio, or io_uring is advantageous.
• Knowledge of networking concepts and protocols including IP, TCP, UDP, and DNS; experience with InfiniBand, RoCE, or RDMA is a plus.
• Experience with Kubernetes and Grafana is desirable.
• Experience designing production-grade distributed storage components and understanding availability and durability calculations is highly valued.
• Demonstrated ability to troubleshoot complex systems, participate in incident resolution, and work effectively in collaborative engineering environments.
• Strong ownership, problem-solving skills, and enthusiasm for tackling technically challenging infrastructure problems.
• Willingness to participate in coding interviews as part of the recruitment process.
• Candidates must be authorized to work in the country where they apply.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation.
• Career growth and continuous learning opportunities.
• Flexibility and significant ownership over your work.
• Opportunity to work on impactful infrastructure supporting advanced AI workloads.
• Collaborative, innovative, and technically driven working culture.
• International environment with highly experienced engineering and research teams.
• Opportunity to work with cutting-edge compute, storage, networking, and distributed systems technologies.
• Meaningful opportunity to influence the performance and future direction of large-scale AI infrastructure.
• Inclusive workplace committed to equal employment opportunities.
• Support and reasonable accommodations available during the application process.