Posted by employer 5 months ago
First seen on Joblaze 4 months ago
Last verified on the company career page 13 hours ago
Skills & Technologies
Requirements
- Experience
- 5+ years
Not disclosed in this posting: visa sponsorship.
Benefits
Joblaze summary
In this role, the Software Engineer will focus on developing and optimizing a storage layer tailored for AI observability and evaluation, ensuring high performance and scalability. Proficiency in Rust is essential, along with experience in systems programming, database internals, and performance analysis. This position is ideal for seasoned engineers with a strong background in distributed systems and cloud technologies. LangChain is rapidly evolving, providing an environment where team members can significantly influence the development of cutting-edge AI solutions.
Joblaze insights
- Listed about 4 months ago — first seen on Joblaze May 14, 2026. Last confirmed on LangChain's careers page October 10, 2026.
- Salary band is in line with the typical range for Backend roles (median ~$180,000).
- Starts above 56% of 105 comparable senior backend roles in United States that list Kubernetes we track (median $173,000 across 40 companies). See Kubernetes salary trends
- Kubernetes appears in 31.5% of 505 comparable senior backend roles in United States; S3 appears in 1.2% of 505 comparable senior backend roles in United States.
Quick facts
- Is the Senior Software Engineer, Database (SmithDB) role remote?
- No — this is an on-site role in San Francisco, CA.
- What's the salary range?
- LangChain lists $175,000–$240,000 for this role.
- How much experience is required?
- At least 5 years of relevant experience for this Senior Software Engineer, Database (SmithDB) role.
- Where is the role based?
- LangChain is hiring for this position in San Francisco, CA.
- What's the tech stack?
- Joblaze extracted these technologies from the posting: Azure Blob, C++, GCS, Kubernetes, Rust, S3.
- What seniority level is this role?
- LangChain targets senior candidates for this position.
- Is this full-time or contract?
- Full-time for this Senior Software Engineer, Database (SmithDB) role at LangChain.
From the original posting
About Us
About the team
SmithDB is LangChain's internal database team. We're building a storage and query layer purpose-built for AI observability and evaluation. Within six months we went from idea to a production system that offers industry leading performance and scalability for agent observability data. We're a small, fast team of systems engineers tackling genuinely hard problems: storage layout, query execution, compaction, and scaling toward trillions of agent traces. We develop in Rust, run on Kubernetes, and integrate tightly with S3/GCS/Azure Blob. There are no legacy constraints; this is a greenfield system with real production load and ambitious engineering goals.
About the role
We're a fast-moving team looking for a systems / database engineer to help design, optimize, and harden our system. Within 6 months, we've gone from idea to production system but there is still lots to build and optimize. You'll be working on execution, storage layout, performance profiling, and scaling to trillions of traces. This role is based in San Francisco.
What you'll do
Engineer performant Rust code for ingestion and query execution
Optimize for cost and speed, heavily utilizing memory and CPU profiling
Integrate tightly with cloud object stores (S3/GCS/Azure Blob)
Deploy our distributed database services on Kubernetes (multi-tenant, high throughput, low latency)
Contribute to observability for the storage engine itself (metrics, tracing, debug tooling)
What you'll bring
5+ years in systems/database engineering with strong experience in a systems programming language (Rust, C++). Rust strongly preferred, as it is the language we use.
Knowledge of database internals is a plus: query engines, storage systems, indexing, and compaction
Proficiency in systems performance analysis: memory allocation, CPU hotspots, lock contention, async runtimes.
Familiarity with similar query execution engines is a plus
Experience with Kubernetes, distributed systems, and cloud object storage is a plus.
Strong fundamentals in networking, OS concepts, and systems debugging.
Compensation
Salary Range: $185,000-$250,000 USD
Standard company text repeated across LangChain's postings is omitted here.