Senior Software Engineer, AI Data Systems & Database Infrastructure

Build a safer world with us one incident at a time.

is the category creator and leader in Agentic Physical Security. Powered by Ambient Pulsar the first reasoning Vision-Language Model purpose-built for physical security our platform seamlessly integrates with existing security cameras and physical access control systems to unify monitoring access control threat assessment response and investigations through an always-on reasoning layer that augments security operators with superhuman capabilities. The results: 95% fewer false alarms investigations 20x faster and 10x faster response.

The momentum speaks for itself: we doubled new ARR in FY26 and have delivered results for world-class customers including Cisco ServiceNow SentinelOne TikTok Bayer and MoMA. That kind of momentum creates an environment where great people thrive and it shows: we recently ranked #71 out of 500 on the Forbes best startup employers list.

Founded in 2017 and backed by Andreessen Horowitz Y Combinator and Allegion Ventures is on a fast-paced journey to fulfill our mission: prevent every security incident possible.

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About the role:

We are looking for a Senior Platform Engineer to design build and scale the database platform that powers our most critical production and AI systems.

We are looking for an engineer who deeply understands databases and distributed systems and who can build the platforms abstractions and scaling patterns required to operate data stores reliably at high scale.

In this role you will work at the intersection of databases distributed systems application architecture and AI infrastructure. You will help scale relational analytical and vector data stores across both the database layer and the application layer. This includes designing systems for partitioning sharding routing caching replication query optimization and high-availability operations.

You will also work closely with AI teams to build the data infrastructure that supports modern AI applications including vector search retrieval-augmented generation embedding stores model evaluation datasets analytical workloads and low-latency data access for AI-powered product experiences.

The ideal candidate has built or operated database platforms at scale and understands the tradeoffs behind systems like Vitess CockroachDB Spanner DynamoDB Cassandra Redis ClickHouse and modern vector search systems. You should be comfortable reasoning about latency availability durability consistency reliability and operational complexity in tier-0 production environments.

This role is ideal for someone who wants to apply deep database and distributed systems expertise to the next generation of AI-powered products.

What youll do:

• Design build and operate scalable database infrastructure for mission-critical production and AI systems.

• Scale relational analytical and vector data stores to support growing product customer and AI workloads.

• Improve database performance across latency throughput availability reliability durability and cost.

• Own database architecture decisions around partitioning sharding replication indexing caching query optimization and data modeling.

• Operate tier-0 data services with strong reliability observability incident response and disaster recovery practices.

• Build automation and tooling to improve database provisioning migrations monitoring backups failover and capacity planning.

• Partner with AI teams to support data infrastructure needs for embeddings vector search retrieval workflows training data model evaluation and analytics.

• Build low-latency data-serving patterns that power AI features in production

• Work closely with engineering teams to design data access patterns that are scalable reliable and performant.

• Identify bottlenecks in production systems and drive improvements across application database cache and infrastructure layers.

• Define and enforce best practices for schema design database usage data lifecycle management and operational safety.

• Help evolve our long-term data platform strategy as the company scales.

What youll bring:

• 7 years of industry experience in database infrastructure backend infrastructure distributed systems or production platform engineering.

• Deep hands-on experience operating and scaling production databases in high-availability environments.

• Strong experience with relational databases such as PostgreSQL MySQL Aurora CockroachDB Vitess or similar systems.

• Experience with analytical data stores such as ClickHouse BigQuery Snowflake Redshift Druid Pinot or similar technologies.

• Experience with vector databases or vector search systems such as pgvector Pinecone Milvus OpenSearch or similar systems.

• Strong understanding of partitioning sharding replication indexing caching query planning and storage engine tradeoffs.

• Proven ability to optimize systems for low latency high availability reliability and operational simplicity.

• Experience operating tier-0 or business-critical infrastructure services with strong uptime and reliability requirements.

• Strong understanding of caching strategies using systems such as Redis Memcached CDN-backed caches or application-level caching.

• Experience with observability monitoring alerting SLOs capacity planning and incident response for database systems.

• Strong programming skills ideally in Python C Go or similar languages.

• Experience with cloud infrastructure Kubernetes Terraform CI/CD and infrastructure-as-code practices.

• Ability to collaborate effectively with backend AI product security and infrastructure teams.

• Strong ownership mindset and ability to make pragmatic tradeoffs in complex production environments.

Nice to Have

• Experience scaling databases for real-time high-volume customer-facing products.

• Experience with multi-region database architectures replication failover disaster recovery and data residency considerations.

• Experience with database migration strategies online schema changes zero-downtime migrations and backfills.

• Experience supporting AI or ML workloads including vector search retrieval-augmented generation embedding pipelines feature stores training data pipelines or model evaluation systems.

• Experience with streaming systems such as Kafka Flin or Spark..

• Experience with database internals storage engines distributed consensus or query execution.

• Experience managing cost and performance tradeoffs across cloud-managed and self-hosted database systems.

• Experience building internal database platforms tooling or paved paths for engineering teams.

What Success Looks Like

You will be successful in this role if you can operate critical database systems with a high bar for reliability while continuously improving scale performance and developer velocity.

You should have a strong bias for operational excellence a deep understanding of database tradeoffs and a proven track record of scaling real production systems. You should be comfortable debugging complex latency issues planning capacity before it becomes a problem and designing systems that remain reliable as data volume query complexity and customer usage grow.

This role is ideal for someone who has done this work before: scaling production data stores improving reliability reducing latency and supporting teams that depend on data infrastructure as the foundation for their products and AI systems.

Why join us:

• We are creating an entirely new category within a 180 billion-dollar physical security industry and looking for team members who are also passionate about our mission to prevent every security incident possible

• We partner with an incredible customer roster of F500 companies including Adobe TikTok Gap and SentinelOne

• Regular Full-time employees receive stock options for the opportunity to share ownership in the success of our company

• Comprehensive health welfare package (Medical Dental Vision Life EAP Legal Services 401k plan)

• We offer flexible time off to rest and recharge including Winter Break (time off between Christmas and New Years for most roles depending on customer demand)

• The latest tech and awesome swag will be delivered to your door

• Enjoy a full range of opportunities to connect with your awesome co-workers

• We love to hike are foodies and love music! Check out our most recent Ambient Spotify Playlist

Weve found that in-person time meaningfully supports collaboration creativity and team alignment. Our talent engineering product design and marketing teams work from our Redwood City office three days a week. All other Bay Area employees join on Fridays to stay connected and close out the week together.

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is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. Ambient does not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race color religion sex (including pregnancy childbirth breastfeeding or related medical conditions) gender identity gender expression national origin ancestry citizenship age physical or mental disability legally protected medical condition family care status military or veteran status marital status registered domestic partner status sexual orientation genetic information or any other basis protected by local state or federal laws. Ambient is an E-Verify participant.

Required Experience:

Senior IC