Senior Rust Software Engineer

Building data-driven AI applications and agents is too complex, even for advanced developers. At Spice AI, we’re making it simpler by helping developers combine code, data, and AI to build truly intelligent, decision-making systems. Our mission is to make this as easy as creating a modern web page.

We created Spice.ai OSS, a portable AI database written in Rust with a unified SQL interface to query, materialize, and accelerate data from any source, co-located with machine learning models. By bringing compute, data, and models together, Spice OSS enables secure AI-Feedback-Loops (AI-Fly-Wheels) for apps and agents to learn and adapt.

For a deeper dive into the vision, watch Luke's CMU Databases talk on Spice.ai OSS at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyM-ec1lKfU and read his Materialized View interview at https://materializedview.io/p/building-a-cdn-for-databases-spice-ai.

We're also building the Spice.ai Cloud Platform, offering managed, cloud-scale Spice.ai OSS along with tools for high-performance SQL, machine learning training, and inference in an interconnected AI backend-as-a-service.

At Spice AI, we hire for MEI: Merit, Excellence, and Intelligence. We're looking for exceptional, top-tier engineers - A players - who are driven to solve hard problems and push the boundaries of what's possible for AI.

As a Senior Software Engineer, you will

• Design and implement big data, distributed, and machine learning systems using modern tech stacks in Rust, Golang, and Python.
• Build high-performance and scalable architecture to meet the evolution and needs of a rapidly growing platform. 
• Grow your career with a team of experienced engineers, using the latest technologies like Apache Arrow, to create the modern data and AI platform. 

Who we are looking for

• You are passionate about building amazing developer experiences. You start with a customer-obsessed product experience and then figure out how to enable that with technology.
• You think differently. You do not accept the status-quo. You challenge the current model of the world and take leaps of faith to build it better for everyone.
• You are positive. Instead of focusing on limitations, you ask what’s possible. 
• You care about meaningful work and changing the world. Your work is more than a job. 
• You are comfortable with ambiguity and unknowns, and in these situations you lead by creating clarity. 
• You are passionate about high performance and have high standards.

This experience would be ideal

• 5+ years designing, implementing, and shipping production data and/or machine learning runtimes and distributed systems. 
• Experience with real-time and batch big data sets and platforms, ideally 10-100+ TB. 
• Solid understanding of modern data stacks, ideally in Spark, dbt, Dremio, Apache Iceberg and Arrow. 
• Proficiency in Golang (Rust, C++, and Python experience are a bonus). 
• A track record of good design, architectural, engineering and product decisions. 
• Excellent communication skills.

Your First 90 Days

• Days 0-30: ramp up and contribute improvements to the Spice.ai Data & AI Platform
• Days 31-60: co-build a major feature
• Days 61-90: take technical and engineering ownership of a major initiative or area 

About Spice AI

Founded in June 2021 by Microsoft and GitHub alumni Luke Kim and Phillip LeBlanc, Spice AI creates technology to help developers build intelligent applications and agents that learn and adapt.

Before co-founding Spice AI, Luke was the co-creator of Azure Incubations in the Office of the Azure CTO, where he led cross-functional engineering teams to create and develop technologies including Dapr and OAM.

Spice AI is backed by some of the top industry angel investors and leaders, including Nat Friedman, Mark Russinovich, CTO of Microsoft Azure, and Thomas Dohmke, CEO of GitHub, who is also on the board.

Spice AI also has notable VC backing from Madrona Venture Group, Basis Set Ventures, Founders' Co-op, and Picus Capital.

Learn more:

- On TechCrunch and GeekWire

- About the team at spice.ai/careers

- The Spice.ai general availability announcement blog post

- The Spice.ai OSS project announcement blog post