Senior Software Engineer / Architect - Search Engine Internals (Full-Text & Hybrid Retrieval)

Job Description

Senior / Principal Software Engineer or Architect

Database Engine, Search & Document Systems

We are looking for senior systems builders to help shape the next generation of document, search, and AI-facing capabilities inside Oracle Database.

This is a role for engineers who like deep technical work: database internals, query processing, indexing, storage formats, search infrastructure, language design, and performance engineering. The strongest candidates may come from database engines, search and information retrieval systems, storage engines, compilers, distributed systems, or adjacent systems software backgrounds.

We are hiring across several related areas, so you do not need to match every bullet below. The common thread is this: you build serious production systems, you understand the fundamentals, and you want your work to ship inside a database platform used by demanding enterprise customers at scale.

This is not an LLM training or prompt-engineering role. The AI angle here is about the data layer: document processing, hybrid lexical/vector retrieval, query surfaces, indexing, pipelines, and production infrastructure for intelligent applications.

What You Could Work On

Depending on your background and interests, you may work in one or more of the following areas.

SQL/JSON and Document Engine Internals

Design and implement core database functionality for JSON and document workloads, including query processing, indexing, optimization, execution, and storage-level behavior.

Performance is a first-class concern. You will profile, benchmark, diagnose, and tune across the stack, from on-disk and binary formats through query execution and optimizer behavior.

This area is especially relevant if you have experience with database internals, query engines, storage engines, indexing, optimizers, or document data models.

Full-Text Search and Hybrid Retrieval

Help build search capabilities that are deeply integrated into the database engine, including inverted indexes, analyzers, tokenization, ranking, relevance, and query integration.

You may also work on hybrid retrieval that combines traditional lexical search with vector similarity search, enabling applications to retrieve information using both structured database queries and modern AI-oriented retrieval techniques.

This area is especially relevant if you have experience with Lucene, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, information retrieval, ranking, search infrastructure, vector search, or related systems.

Document APIs, Compatibility, and Migration

Help evolve developer-facing document APIs, including Oracle's MongoDB-compatible API, and improve the experience of moving production document workloads onto Oracle.

This includes identifying compatibility gaps, prioritizing fixes, working with migration and Developer Operations teams, and occasionally engaging directly with customers to understand how real workloads behave in production.

This area is especially relevant if you have experience with MongoDB, document databases, database APIs, query-language compatibility, enterprise migrations, or customer-facing systems engineering.

AI-Enabled Document Capabilities

Design and ship infrastructure where documents are not only stored and queried, but also classified, transformed, searched, enriched, and reasoned over as part of larger application workflows.

The focus is on production systems: indexes, operators, APIs, pipelines, data formats, query surfaces, performance, correctness, and operational reliability.

This area is especially relevant if you have experience with document processing systems, retrieval infrastructure, vector search, semantic search, data platforms, or AI application infrastructure.

Query Languages, Compilers, and Cross-Model Systems

Contribute to query-language surfaces, compiler and execution components, and interoperability between relational, JSON, document, search, and vector models.

This area is especially relevant if you have experience with compilers, language design, query planners, runtime systems, SQL, NoSQL query languages, or multi-model databases.

What We Are Looking For

We are looking for senior engineers, principal engineers, or architects with a strong record of designing and shipping production systems software.

You do not need to have worked on Oracle Database before. You do not need to have worked in every area listed above. We are most interested in people with strong fundamentals, deep systems judgment, and the ability to turn hard technical problems into production-quality software.

Why This Team

Real Engine Work

This is database-systems engineering inside a production database engine, not a sidecar service or prototype. The work touches query execution, indexing, optimization, APIs, storage behavior, search, retrieval, and performance-sensitive paths.

You will work on features that ship into one of the largest enterprise software platforms in the world.

A Broad Technical Roadmap

We are expanding across several related areas: SQL/JSON, document workloads, MongoDB-compatible APIs, full-text search, hybrid lexical/vector retrieval, AI-enabled document processing, and new query surfaces.

That breadth creates room for different kinds of senior technical experts. You may go deep in one area or work across multiple layers, depending on your background and the needs of the team.

AI Meets the Data Layer

Modern intelligent applications need more than model calls. They need reliable data infrastructure: indexing, retrieval, document processing, query languages, storage, governance, performance, and operational correctness.

This team works at that layer. The goal is to make document and AI-oriented workloads first-class citizens inside a converged database platform.

Experienced Peers

You will work with engineers who have deep database-systems experience, including people who have helped shape database products, standards, and technical literature over many years.

This is a team where strong engineering judgment, technical depth, and careful design matter.

Ownership and Impact

We value engineers who can think architecturally and still write the code. You will have room to identify gaps, propose designs, lead implementation, mentor others, and help shape the roadmap based on both technical insight and real customer usage.

You Might Be a Fit If

You are the kind of engineer who enjoys reading a database paper, studying a query plan, debugging a performance cliff, designing an index format, improving an API, or tracing how a customer workload behaves in production.

You like building infrastructure that other engineers and customers depend on.

You are comfortable moving between architecture and implementation.

You care about elegant ideas, but you care even more about making them work in real systems.

And you want to build at the intersection of database engines, document systems, search, and AI-era application infrastructure.

Responsibilities

Core Strengths

Systems-building depth - You have designed, implemented, and shipped production systems software. You understand how design decisions affect correctness, performance, operability, and long-term maintainability.

Database or data-systems experience - Ideally, you have worked on database engines, storage engines, search systems, query engines, distributed data systems, or similar infrastructure. Experience with Oracle Database, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, DynamoDB, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Lucene, or comparable systems is valuable.

Strong computer-science fundamentals - You are comfortable with data structures, algorithms, concurrency, storage, query processing, indexing, transactions, distributed systems, or related systems concepts. The fundamentals matter more than any single technology.

Programming depth - You write high-quality production code and are comfortable working close to the system. Our core codebase includes C and Java, so experience with either is helpful. We care more about engineering strength than a specific language checklist.

Performance instinct - You measure before guessing. You profile, benchmark, reason about tradeoffs, and optimize for latency, throughput, memory, storage efficiency, or scalability when the problem requires it.

Technical ownership - You can take an ambiguous technical problem, clarify the goal, propose a design, build consensus, implement the solution, and drive it toward production.

Communication and leadership - You can explain technical ideas clearly to peers, leadership, and partner teams. You raise the quality bar through design reviews, mentoring, and thoughtful engineering judgment.

Research Background Is a Plus, Not a Requirement

A research background can be very valuable for this work, especially in databases, systems, search, compilers, programming languages, or distributed systems. A PhD or publications at venues such as VLDB, SIGMOD, ICDE, SOSP, OSDI, NSDI, PLDI, or comparable conferences are a plus.

But this is not a credential-gated role.

We are equally interested in candidates who have built production systems from first principles, taken research-grade ideas into real products, or developed deep expertise through industry experience. What matters is your ability to understand hard systems problems, evaluate technical tradeoffs, and build software that works under production constraints.

Qualifications

Disclaimer:

Certain U.S. based or U.S. customer or client-facing roles may be required to comply with applicable requirements, such as immunization/occupational health mandates, and/or drug testing requirements.

Range and benefit information provided in this posting are specific to the stated locations only

US: Hiring Range in USD from: $135,200 to $306,400 per annum. May be eligible for bonus, equity, and compensation deferral.

Oracle maintains broad salary ranges for its roles in order to account for variations in knowledge, skills, experience, market conditions and locations, as well as reflect Oracle's differing products, industries and lines of business.

Candidates are typically placed into the range based on the preceding factors as well as internal peer equity.

Oracle US offers a comprehensive benefits package which includes the following:

1. Medical, dental, and vision insurance, including expert medical opinion
2. Short term disability and long term disability
3. Life insurance and AD&D
4. Supplemental life insurance (Employee/Spouse/Child)
5. Health care and dependent care Flexible Spending Accounts
6. Pre-tax commuter and parking benefits
7. 401(k) Savings and Investment Plan with company match
8. Paid time off: Flexible Vacation is provided to all eligible employees assigned to a salaried (non-overtime eligible) position. Accrued Vacation is provided to all other employees eligible for vacation benefits. For employees working at least 35 hours per week, the vacation accrual rate is 13 days annually for the first three years of employment and 18 days annually for subsequent years of employment. Vacation accrual is prorated for employees working between 20 and 34 hours per week. Employees working fewer than 20 hours per week are not eligible for vacation.
9. 11 paid holidays
10. Paid sick leave: 72 hours of paid sick leave upon date of hire. Refreshes each calendar year. Unused balance will carry over each year up to a maximum cap of 112 hours.
11. Paid parental leave
12. Adoption assistance
13. Employee Stock Purchase Plan
14. Financial planning and group legal
15. Voluntary benefits including auto, homeowner and pet insurance

The role will generally accept applications for at least three calendar days from the posting date or as long as the job remains posted.

Career Level - IC5