Database Engineer

$162,400spanspan class="divider"-spanspan$203,000 USDspandivdivdivdiv class="content-conclusion"pPLEASE NOTE: Our policy requires a 90-day waiting period before reconsidering candidates for the same role United States, New York, New York Apr 24, 2026

Scale is powering this generative AI wave by providing the data and infrastructure for companies to build large-scale foundation models. AI is rapidly changing the world, and Scale is growing to meet that rapid demand. Our customers include OpenAI, Microsoft, Adept, Stability AI and many more major players in this space!

The Platform team is responsible for building the core abstractions and infrastructure on which the products can be built and iterated rapidly. The team owns how data flows throughout the Scale platform. We're looking for a database engineer with deep experience building and scaling both structured and unstructured database platforms supporting distributed systems, data-intensive applications, and machine learning infrastructure. You have a growth mindset and are comfortable learning new technologies.

You will:

• Build and mature database foundations for Scale, leveraging industry-standard platforms.
• Collaborate with stakeholders across the organization, such as software developers, platform engineers, machine learning scientists, customer operations, etc.
• Own services or systems and define their long-term health goals, while also improving the health of surrounding components.
• Mentor other engineers and become deeply involved in architectural design and database best-practices.
• Improve our high engineering standards, tooling, and process.
• Work directly with our engineering and sales teams to create backend database solutions to meet their challenging data and security needs.
• Work with our Security Team on security compliance, pen tests and mitigations that improve security across Scale.
• Build systems capable of handling millions of frames of data every day, making it available to both our workforce and our internal teams with high availability.

• 5+ years of industry experience as a database engineer post graduation.
• Engineering experience with building real-time and distributed system architecture.
• Experience designing and self hosting databases on industry standard public cloud platforms
• Deep familiarity with design, architecture, optimization, and tuning multiple database platforms such as MongoDB, Postgres, MySQL, DynamoDB, Redis
• Deep familiarity with SQL query optimization, database indexing, scalability (partitioning/sharding), and replication
• Experience developing and optimizing backup and restore functionality to meet RTO goals
• Intermediate experience in at least one coding language: Typescript, Python, Go, Java, C++ (note that we are mostly language-agnostic and are open to using whatever is the best tech for the problem at hand).
• Experience working with Docker, Kubernetes, and Infra-as-Code (e.g. Terraform); bonus points for experience supporting GPU/ML workloads.

Nice to haves:

• Prior startup experience to help us grow responsibly.
• Experience with AWS, Datadog, ElasticSearch
• Experience with cloud-based data warehouse solutions like Snowflake or Databricks.
• Experience with cost optimization strategies and techniques for database platforms.
• Experience developing and designing intermediary data abstraction layers.
• Mentored and grown members of your team or been a tech lead on large projects.

Compensation packages at Scale for eligible roles include base salary, equity, and benefits. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position, determined by work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, interview performance, and relevant education or training. Scale employees in eligible roles are also granted equity based compensation, subject to Board of Director approval. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during the hiring process, and confirm whether the hired role will be eligible for equity grant. You'll also receive benefits including, but not limited to: Comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, a learning and development stipend, and generous PTO. Additionally, this role may be eligible for additional benefits such as a commuter stipend. Please reference the job posting's subtitle for where this position will be located. For pay transparency purposes, the base salary range for this full-time position in the locations of San Francisco, New York, Seattle is: $162,400 - $203,000 USD

PLEASE NOTE:Our policy requires a 90-day waiting period before reconsidering candidates for the same role. This allows us to ensure a fair and thorough evaluation of all applicants.

At Scale, our mission is to develop reliable AI systems for the world's most important decisions. Our products provide the high-quality data and full-stack technologies that power the world's leading models, and help enterprises and governments build, deploy, and oversee AI applications that deliver real impact. We work closely with industry leaders like Meta, Cisco, DLA Piper, Mayo Clinic, Time Inc., the Government of Qatar, and U.S. government agencies including the Army and Air Force. We are expanding our team to accelerate the development of AI applications.