Senior Software Engineer, Zilliz

Cloud Platform

$175-225k

Plus equity and bonus

AWS

Docker

Kubernetes

GCP

Terraform

Azure

Prometheus

Grafana

Simplicity

Mid and Senior level

San Francisco Bay Area

Office located in Redwood City, CA

Vector database for production-ready AI

Be an early applicant

Vector database for production-ready AI

101-200 employees

B2BArtificial IntelligenceData storageAnalyticsSaaS

Be an early applicant

$175-225k

Plus equity and bonus

AWS

Docker

Kubernetes

GCP

Terraform

Azure

Prometheus

Grafana

Simplicity

Mid and Senior level

San Francisco Bay Area

Office located in Redwood City, CA

101-200 employees

B2BArtificial IntelligenceData storageAnalyticsSaaS

Company mission

To democratise AI, Zilliz is committed to simplifying data management for AI applications and making vector databases accessible to every organisation.

Job

Company

Role

Who you are

3+ years of experience building production systems such as large-scale SaaS platforms, data platforms, AI applications, microservices, or cloud infrastructure
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
Strong hands-on experience with Kubernetes, Docker, and at least one major cloud platform such as AWS, GCP, or Azure
Familiarity with infrastructure automation and cloud operations tooling such as Terraform, Helm, Argo CD, Prometheus, Grafana, CI/CD systems, or similar tools
Experience building cloud-native platform systems is a strong plus, including scheduling, orchestration, deployment, configuration, upgrades, lifecycle management, or resource management
Understanding of distributed databases or database engine internals is a strong plus, especially around scalability, performance, reliability, and multi-tenant isolation
Strong interest in AI-assisted development and engineering productivity. We value engineers who actively use AI to multiply their output across coding, debugging, testing, documentation, and operations

What the job involves

This is not a standard control-plane platform role. You will work across both the cloud platform and database runtime, building cloud-and-engine integrated systems around Vector Lakebase so AI workloads can be scheduled faster, run more reliably, and serve real customers more efficiently
Design and build the cloud platform behind Zilliz Cloud and Vector Lakebase, bringing together cloud control plane, database runtime, scheduling, resource management, deployment, and lifecycle management to support fast workload placement, elastic scaling, multi-tenant isolation, and cost-efficient execution
Build cloud-native systems that make distributed database provisioning, scaling, upgrades, recovery, and workload migration automated, observable, rollback-safe, and efficient
Work deep across Kubernetes, multi-cloud infrastructure, networking, storage, and database engine runtimes to deliver a tightly integrated cloud-and-engine product experience
Improve platform scalability, reliability, performance, and operational simplicity as we grow across customers, regions, tenants, datasets, and AI workloads
Partner with database, reliability, and product engineers to bring new Vector Lakebase capabilities into cloud production safely and quickly
Use AI deeply across the platform engineering workflow, including deployment validation, diagnosis, incident analysis, capacity planning, documentation, code generation, and operational tooling

Our take

Vector databases have become essential for powering advanced AI applications, which demand high recall, low latency, and robust throughput. Zilliz has positioned itself at the forefront of this field with its vector database management system, Milvus.

Building on its initial success, Zilliz released Milvus 2.4m in 2024, which significantly enhances vector search capabilities. This version introduced GPU indexing, leveraging NVIDIA's CUDA-Accelerated Graph Index for Vector Retrieval (CAGRA), which outperforms traditional CPU-based indexes like HNSW. In 2026, Milvus 2.6 was released, harnessing even more power at a lower cost.

Zilliz's commitment to innovation is further demonstrated by the expansion of its Hybrid Search capabilities, including a beta version of sparse vector embeddings for more accurate and semantically rich searches. These advancements, along with the evolution of Zilliz Cloud, emphasise the company's dedication to pushing the boundaries of what vector databases can achieve and make the future of the company an exciting one.

Freddie

Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle

Insights

27% employee growth in 12 months

Glassdoor (4)

Company

Funding (last 2 of 3 rounds)

Aug 2022

$60m

SERIES B

Nov 2020

$43m

SERIES B

Total funding: $113m

Company benefits

Equity
Regular bonus and equity refresh opportunities
Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance
Paid time off, including vacation, bereavement, and sick days
Generous 401(k) and regional retirement plans
Hybrid work model/Remote work opportunities available

Company HQ

Centennial, Redwood City, CA

Leadership

Charles Xie

(CEO)

Previously worked as a Senior Software Engineer at Oracle, before creating The Milvus Project. Serves on the governing board of the LF AI & Data Foundation.

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