---
title: 'Senior Software Engineer, Database Systems at Zilliz'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-database-systems-zilliz-redwood-city-apd7b6eqazwm'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-07'
---

# Senior Software Engineer, Database Systems at Zilliz

- **Company:** Zilliz
- **Location:** Redwood City, CA
- **Compensation:** $175k–$250k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2025-05-15
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-07
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/zilliz/02848077-ca83-461e-87cd-e8b95d7f0c51

## Job description

Zilliz is a fast-growing startup developing the industry’s leading vector database for enterprise-grade AI. Founded by the engineers behind Milvus, the world’s most popular open-source vector database, the company builds next-generation database technologies to help organizations quickly create AI applications. On a mission to democratize AI, Zilliz is committed to simplifying data management for AI applications and making vector databases accessible to every organization.

The Database Systems team builds the core engine behind Milvus and Zilliz Cloud Vector Lakebase; spanning storage, query execution, indexing, load balancing, resource management, and distributed system architecture. We build the next generation of vector databases around three Natives: AI-Native: Born for AI and Agent workloads, with native support for vector data and semantic retrieval Cloud-Native: Designed for elastic scaling and large-scale operation in the cloud Lake-Native: Built on a data-lake architecture that works naturally with data at massive scale For this team, scalability, performance, cost efficiency, and reliability are the core engineering goals.

What you will do:

- Design and build core modules of Milvus and Vector Lakebase, including storage, query engine, indexing, load balancing, resource management, and distributed execution
- Drive the evolution of the engine architecture, bringing Lake-native capabilities, elastic scaling, and large-scale multi-tenancy into production to support the next stage of growth
- Design database capabilities for AI and Agent workloads, handling more complex access patterns, higher concurrency, larger scale, and lower latency
- Own the stability of Zilliz Cloud, working closely with cloud platform and product engineering teams to bring engine capabilities into production and using real customer scenarios to drive engine improvements
- Iterate on AI developer tooling, bringing AI into the engineering workflow to improve team velocity and system observability
- Contribute to the Milvus open-source community through design docs, code, code reviews, and technical discussions

What we are looking for:

- 3+ years of experience building database systems, distributed systems, storage engines, query engines, search systems, or large-scale data infrastructure
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
- Strong systems programming ability in one or more of C++, Go, or Rust
- Deep understanding of distributed systems and database internals, including consistency, scalability, performance, fault tolerance, query execution, storage, indexing, resource management, and engineering tradeoffs
- Strong engineering taste: the ability to judge what design is simpler, what abstraction will last, and which performance and cost tradeoffs actually matter
- Experience with large-scale cloud-native databases, storage systems, search systems, or data platforms is a strong plus; open-source contributions in databases, storage, search, Kubernetes, or distributed systems are a strong plus

How we operate:

- Deep systems engineering: We care about correctness, performance, simplicity, and long-term architecture, not just shipping features
- AI-accelerated engineering: We use AI to assist with coding, testing, documentation, and design drafts, but human engineering taste matters more: deciding what's worth building, what design is simpler, and what abstraction will last
- High growth, fast pace: We move fast at this stage and value ownership, fast learning, and the drive to take on hard problems. This team suits engineers who want a steep growth curve and rapid leveling-up
- Fast and pragmatic: We work on hard database problems, but we ship them into real products used by real customers

Benefits:

- Competitive compensation (cash + equity)
- Regular bonus and equity refresh opportunities
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance
- Paid time off, including vacation, sick leave, and global reset/wellbeing days
- Generous 401(k) and regional retirement plans

Zilliz is an Equal Opportunity Employer and welcomes people from all backgrounds, experiences, abilities, and perspectives. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment regardless of race, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, age, physical disability, or length of time spent unemployed.

## About Zilliz

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Zilliz builds the world’s most popular open-source vector database, Milvus, and offers a fully managed Vector Lakebase to power enterprise AI applications at any scale.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series B, $113M total funding)
- **Headquarters**: Redwood City, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2017
- **Founders**: Charles Xie (CEO) and James Luan (CTO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industries**: Vector database management, AI infrastructure, software development
- **Target customers**: B2B enterprise (10,000+ enterprise users)
- **Mission**: To make vector database capabilities accessible to every developer and organization, helping them harness unstructured data for AI/ML applications.

## Products & Services
- **[Milvus (Open-Source Vector Database)](https://zilliz.com/about)**: The leading open-source vector database, originally created by Zilliz and hosted under LF AI. Enables billion-scale similarity search, hybrid retrieval (vector, text, JSON, geospatial), and is production-tested across thousands of enterprises.
- **[Zilliz Vector Lakebase](https://zilliz.com/)**: A fully managed cloud service built on Milvus that unifies real-time vector search, lake-scale discovery, and AI data operations. Features include on-demand pay-per-query pricing, hot-cache on S3 for 90% cost reduction, multi-tenancy, and seamless backfill/schema iteration.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding of $113 million; annual revenue estimated at $2.2 million (as of latest report)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Series A led by 5Y Capital (2018); Series B led by Hillhouse Investment ($43M, 2020); Series B extension led by Prosperity7 Ventures ($60M, 2022)
- **Growth Signals**: 91 employees (8.9% YoY growth); 25,000+ LinkedIn followers (100% yearly growth); 10 active job postings (42.9% increase YoY); offices in Redwood City, New York, Shanghai, London, Berlin, Singapore

## Competitive Advantages
- **Open-source ecosystem**: Milvus is the most widely adopted open-source vector database, with a strong community and 10,000+ enterprise users.
- **Proven at scale**: Production-tested over 8 years, handling 100B+ entities and 10K+ QPS with consistent latency.
- **Cost efficiency**: All data/indexes stored on S3 with hot cache; on-demand compute reduces costs by up to 90%.
- **Full-spectrum search**: Supports hybrid retrieval combining vector, text, JSON, and geospatial queries with filtering and reranking.
- **Vortex format**: An open, next-gen storage format that delivers up to 10x faster random reads than Lance, with per-column flexibility.

## Strategic Focus
- **Enterprise AI adoption**: Expanding the Vector Lakebase to serve massive multi-tenancy, global replication, and low-latency access for AI applications.
- **Global expansion**: Multi-region deployment and offices across the US, Europe, and Asia to support worldwide AI scaling.
- **Continuous innovation**: Investing in research (vector index research roles) and cloud platform reliability to maintain leadership in vector database technology.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Deep technical culture built by the creators of Milvus; engineers and scientists focused on advancing AI and data infrastructure.
- **Work model**: Hybrid/remote opportunities available; offices in Redwood City, New York, Shanghai, London, Berlin, and Singapore.
- **Benefits**: Competitive compensation (cash + equity), regular bonus and equity refresh, comprehensive medical/dental/vision, generous PTO, 401(k) and regional retirement plans, and paid sick leave.
- **Engineering culture**: Work on cutting-edge technology at the intersection of databases and AI, with opportunities to contribute to open source and solve real-world scale challenges.

## Sources
1. [zilliz.com/careers](https://zilliz.com/careers) – Benefits, hybrid work model, company mission
2. [zilliz.com/about](https://zilliz.com/about) – Founding story, leadership, locations, investment, enterprise users
3. [zilliz.com](https://zilliz.com/) – Product details (Vector Lakebase, features, cost savings, scale)
4. [cr.linkedin.com/company/zilliz](https://cr.linkedin.com/company/zilliz) – Employee count, revenue, funding rounds, job postings, demographics
5. [theconsensus.dev/company/zilliz.html](https://theconsensus.dev/company/zilliz.html) – Funding history, job openings

## Other roles at Zilliz

- [Senior Recruiter, GTM](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-recruiter-gtm-zilliz-redwood-city-3dbaw85s6h7t) — Redwood City, CA
- [Senior Recruiter, Technical](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-recruiter-technical-zilliz-redwood-city-r3015tzfhrvh) — Redwood City, CA
- [Senior HR Manager, North America & Europe](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-hr-manager-north-america-europe-zilliz-redwood-city-g3s4fq3wqjat) — Redwood City, CA
- [Founding Field Engineer, Japan](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-field-engineer-japan-zilliz-tokyo-7zgf5mgkve3e) — Tokyo, Japan
- [Senior Software Engineer, Vector Index Research](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-vector-index-research-zilliz-redwood-city-4v3hvtr0jp3f) — Redwood City, CA
- [Senior Software Engineer, Cloud Platform](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-cloud-platform-zilliz-redwood-city-f8sagdsxspja) — Redwood City, CA
- [Enterprise Account Executive - Texas](https://feeny.ai/job/enterprise-account-executive-texas-zilliz-austin-rexebkn8d37m) — Austin, TX
- [Enterprise Account Executive - South Korea](https://feeny.ai/job/enterprise-account-executive-south-korea-zilliz-seoul-d99g77v0qhv9) — Seoul, South Korea
- [Enterprise Account Executive - Japan](https://feeny.ai/job/enterprise-account-executive-japan-zilliz-tokyo-qbdvqknpzq1c) — Tokyo, Japan
- [Enterprise Account Executive - New York](https://feeny.ai/job/enterprise-account-executive-new-york-zilliz-new-york-bcbdq3f8970x) — New York, NY