Senior Software Engineer - RDF Infrastructure

Bloomberg•New York, NY

17d•$160,000 - $240,000•Onsite

About The Position

Our group, the BQL and Semantic Platform group, builds the core query and semantic infrastructure used to access, analyze, model, and organize Bloomberg data. We develop the BQL engine, which powers Bloomberg Query Language and provides a common way to query and analyze data across Bloomberg. We also build the semantic platform used to define, manage, and materialize the semantic artifacts that describe Bloomberg data and the relationships between it. Together, these capabilities provide the foundation for making Bloomberg data consistently queryable and semantically connected across products, applications, and emerging AI-driven use cases. As part of Bloomberg’s investment in Semantic Technologies, we are building and operating Bloomberg’s RDF triplestore infrastructure. Our team develops the database itself, working across the internals of graph storage and query processing rather than simply deploying or operating an existing database product. Our work spans physical storage and indexing, SPARQL query planning and execution, transaction and isolation semantics, statistics and cardinality estimation, inference, replication, scalability, and operational reliability. The platform stores semantic models and large RDF datasets used by engineering teams across Bloomberg. We are responsible for making billions of RDF statements efficiently queryable while providing the performance, correctness, availability, and reliability expected of enterprise-grade database infrastructure.

Requirements

4+ years of professional software development experience
A degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, a related field, or equivalent practical experience
Hands-on experience developing database or graph database internals, rather than solely building applications on top of databases
Experience developing RDF triplestore, labeled property graph, or closely related graph database infrastructure
Strong understanding of several areas of database implementation, such as: Storage engines, indexing, and physical data representation; Query planning, optimization, and execution; Transactions, concurrency, and isolation; Cardinality estimation and database statistics; Caching, memory management, and disk I/O; Replication, recovery, or high-availability architecture
Strong software engineering skills in Java or another systems-oriented programming language

Nice To Haves

Deep experience with Eclipse RDF4J, Apache Jena, or another RDF triplestore implementation
Experience with labeled property graph database internals or graph query engines
Experience implementing or optimizing SPARQL, Cypher, Gremlin, or other graph query languages
Experience with RDF or graph storage layouts and indexing strategies
Experience contributing to or modifying open-source database engines
Experience with LMDB, RocksDB, or other embedded key-value or storage engines
Knowledge of RDF, SPARQL, SHACL, inference, and Semantic Web standards
Experience diagnosing database performance at large scale, including memory, I/O, query planning, and storage bottlenecks

Responsibilities

Develops the database itself, working across the internals of graph storage and query processing.
Works on physical storage and indexing.
Handles SPARQL query planning and execution.
Manages transaction and isolation semantics.
Focuses on statistics and cardinality estimation.
Involves inference.
Deals with replication, scalability, and operational reliability.
Ensures billions of RDF statements are efficiently queryable.
Provides performance, correctness, availability, and reliability for enterprise-grade database infrastructure.