Staff Software Engineer (Database Team)

About Pinecone

Pinecone is the leading vector database for building accurate and performant AI applications at scale in production. Pinecone's mission is to make AI knowledgeable. More than 5000 customers across various industries have shipped AI applications faster and more confidently with Pinecone's developer-friendly technology. Pinecone is based in New York and raised $138M in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, ICONIQ, Menlo Ventures, and Wing Venture Capital.

About the Team and Role:

This position involves building robust, large-scale, real-time, low-latency distributed systems for a cutting edge database, with a focus on performance, autoscaling, load-balancing, reliability, scalability, high availability, and consistency.

Responsibilities:

As a Staff Software Engineer, you will be working on the following projects:

• Developing high availability architectures for the database
• Tuning the performance of the database within large areas of ownership
• Enabling Pinecone to seamlessly run on existing cloud providers

You will work in a fast-paced and rewarding environment with a team that does the highest quality work with minimal supervision. Our current tech stack includes Rust, AWS/GCP/Azure, and Kubernetes.

 Requirements:

• 5+ years of experience with Rust, C++, or Go
• 5+ years of developing, monitoring and operating large scale distributed systems
• BS in Computer Science or a related technical field or equivalent experience

Bonus Points:

• Deep experience with profiling tools (e.g., perf, valgrind, heaptrack, flamegraph, gperftools, tokio-console, pprof, etc.)
• Strong debugging skills for memory leaks, contention, and performance bottlenecks in async and multi-threaded environments

Perks & Benefits:

• Comprehensive health coverage including medical, dental, vision, and mental health resources
• 401(k) Plan
• Equity award
• Flexible time off
• Paid parental leave
• Annual Company Retreat
• WFH Equipment Stipend

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) are the cornerstone of everything we do at Pinecone. Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply for jobs unless they believe they meet every one of the qualifications in a job description. Our top priority is finding the best candidate for the job and if you are interested in the position, we would encourage you to apply, even if you don’t believe you meet every one of the qualifications listed in this posting. All qualified applicants will receive considerations for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, marital status, familial status, sexual orientation, pregnancy, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, veteran status, and any other legally protected status under federal, state, or local anti-discrimination laws.