About MariaDB
MariaDB is making a big impact on the world. Whether you’re checking your bank account, buying a coffee, shopping online, making a phone call, listening to music, taking out a loan or ordering takeout – MariaDB is the backbone of applications used everyday. Companies small and large, including 75% of the Fortune 500, run MariaDB, touching the lives of billions of people. With massive reach through Linux distributions, enterprise deployments and public clouds, MariaDB is uniquely positioned as the leading database for modern application development.
The Role
You will be responsible for the development and testing of a highly scalable, geo-distributed, highly performant database solution. You should have experience working on distributed software solutions and have a strong background working with on-premise and cloud-based solutions. You will also be responsible for managing a number of Software Engineers on the project.
Distributed Database Staff Engineer
Here at MariaDB we are seeking a highly motivated and experienced Distributed Database Staff Engineer to lead the development of our highly scalable, geo-distributed, and highly performant database solution. This role requires a strong background in distributed software solutions, experience with both on-premise and cloud-based environments, and proven leadership abilities. You’ll be joining a small, highly skilled team where your work will have a direct impact. Expect to dig deep into replication, sharding, concurrency, and performance optimization—making our systems faster, smarter, and more resilient. You’ll collaborate globally, contribute to open source, and push the limits of what a distributed database can do.
What You’ll Do
- Lead the design, development, and testing of distributed database solutions that scale.
- Manage and mentor a team of Software Engineers.
- Ensure the scalability, performance, and reliability of the database system.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams to define, design, and ship new features.
- Work with both on-premise and cloud-based solutions.
- Troubleshoot and resolve complex issues in distributed environments.
- Make systems rock-solid in performance and reliability, across both on-prem and cloud.
- Profile, debug, and fine-tune performance with tools like perf, htop, iostat—and your own tricks.
- Keep code clean and reviewable with Git.
- Shape infrastructure using CMake or Bazel.
- Monitor with Prometheus and Grafana.
- Dive into Linux/Unix internals (systemd, cgroups, logging, core dumps).
- Automate testing and performance validation with load-testing scripts (YandexTank or your own).
Why You’ll Love It Here
- A globally distributed team where your is tangible, valuable and appreciated.
- Remote or Hybrid work options (location dependent)
- Projects that stretch your skills and make an impact at scale.
- Competitive pay, 25 days paid annual leave (plus holidays), and a culture that values creativity and clean engineering.
What You Bring
- 8+ years of professional experience in C++ (Python/Bash scripting a plus).
- Proven experience working on and leading teams developing distributed software solutions.
- Strong background in developing and testing database systems.
- Excellent leadership, problem-solving, and debugging skills.
- Expertise in both on-prem and cloud computing environments.
- Experience working effectively in a fast-paced, collaborative environments.
- Deep SQL knowledge (MariaDB/MySQL/PostgreSQL) and passion for distributed systems (Raft, MVCC, ACID etc).
- Knows the meaning of MVCC and P2PL and also knows the difference between Snapshot Isolation and REPEATABLE READ.
- Solid background in distributed systems, concurrency, and multithreading.
- Comfort with Linux/Unix systems. (systemd, cgroups, logging, etc). and debugging tools
- Hands-on experience with performance profiling with tools like perf, htop, or iostat.
- Familiarity with observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana).
- Bonus points for open-source contributions, automation expertise, or performance/load testing.
