Software Engineering Manager, Database (SmithDB)
About The Position
LangChain is seeking a hands-on Engineering Manager to lead the SmithDB team. SmithDB is LangChain's internal database team, responsible for building a storage and query layer purpose-built for AI observability and evaluation. This role is not purely people management; the manager will also write production code, review PRs at the systems level, make architectural decisions, and work closely with their engineers. The ideal candidate will have deep systems or database engineering experience and a passion for staying technical while growing a team. LangChain is a rapidly growing company that has raised $125M at Series B, with a mission to make intelligent agents ubiquitous. The company's platform includes open-source tools and a platform for building, evaluating, deploying, and operating AI agents at scale.
Requirements
- 7+ years in systems or database engineering, with at least 2 years in a technical lead or engineering management role
- Production Rust experience — you can write it, review it, and have opinions on how to structure it at scale
- Deep understanding of database or storage engine internals: query execution, storage layouts, indexing, compaction
- Proficiency in systems performance analysis: memory allocators, CPU hotspots, lock contention, async runtimes (Tokio)
- Experience deploying and operating distributed services on Kubernetes in a production, multi-tenant environment
- Familiarity with cloud object storage (S3-compatible APIs, consistency models, cost/performance tradeoffs)
- Proven track record of managing engineers — you can recruit, retain, and level-up a team without losing your technical edge
Nice To Haves
- Experience building or contributing to columnar storage formats (Parquet, Arrow), OLAP query engines, or time-series stores
- Background in observability infrastructure or tracing pipelines (OpenTelemetry, ClickHouse, Prometheus)
- Experience scaling a system from early-stage to hundreds of billions / trillions of records
Responsibilities
- Write and review production Rust code across ingestion, query execution, and storage layers
- Lead architectural decisions on storage format, compaction, indexing, and query planning
- Drive performance investigations using memory and CPU profiling tools; own the path from profiling to shipped fix
- Design and harden the distributed deployment of SmithDB services on Kubernetes (multi-tenant, high-throughput, low-latency)
- Contribute to cloud object store integrations (S3, GCS, Azure Blob) and set the standard for how SmithDB manages data at rest and in flight
- Build and maintain observability for the engine itself: metrics, tracing, debug tooling
- Manage a small but growing team of systems engineers: set goals, run 1:1s, provide technical mentorship, and grow careers
- Own the SmithDB technical roadmap in partnership with LangSmith product and engineering leadership
- Communicate progress, risks, and tradeoffs clearly to the broader organization: you write concise, decision-ready updates
Benefits
- medical, dental, and vision coverage
- flexible vacation
- a 401(k) plan
- meals on in-office days in the US
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Manager
Education Level
No Education Listed
