Job Specifications
At eBay, we're more than a global e-commerce leader — we’re changing the way the world shops and sells. Our platform empowers millions of buyers and sellers in more than 190 markets around the world. We’re committed to pushing boundaries and leaving our mark as we reinvent the future of e-commerce for enthusiasts.
Our customers are our compass, authenticity thrives, bold ideas are welcome, and everyone can bring their unique selves to work — every day. We're in this together, sustaining the future of our customers, our company, and our planet.
Join a team of passionate thinkers, innovators, and dreamers — and help us connect people and build communities to create economic opportunity for all.
Note: By applying to this position, your application will be considered for our location in:
San Jose, CA
About the role:
Our NuData team brings together like-minded engineers opening up the boundaries to build the next generation database platform for eBay. We have already built a distributed, hyperscale, and a highly-performant database platform which demonstrates open source cloud technologies. We are looking into enhancing our core database engine that powers our document, vector db, graph, columnar and key-value stores that can horizontally scale to 1000s of shards, spanning across multiple regions.
The Software Engineering PhD Intern in this role should be passionate about pushing the envelope and not settling for the status quo. Our interns bring cutting edge academic research and industrial knowledge and ideas on how to develop innovative solutions smartly. The platform is being built by a team that has the culture and the environment that technologists find at a startup. We are looking for outstanding software engineering interns with strong research background, development experience in building scalable and geo-distributed solutions. The intern engineer should also have experience in working with production infrastructure. Having a portfolio of research paper authorships is desirable.
The ideal candidate will have a strong understanding of relevant programming languages, database internals, distributed systems, consensus algorithms, transaction systems, consistency levels, design patterns, and storage and network solutions. Exceptional problem solving abilities will be critical for success, as will be a focus on quality. In our environment, quality is everyone’s responsibility, passion is key, innovation and creativity is strongly encouraged. The successful candidate will have a noticeable impact on the product and is expected to participate in the design and development of a feature/benchmark/prototype/proof of concept, ranging from architecture through testing and possibly even production rollout !
Primary Responsibilities:
Be part of a team of energetic engineers building and enhancing next-gen database platform using the latest open source technologies
Works with engineers and mentors in the US and in China
Work with a team of passionate engineers from inception to the completion of a feature or a prototype/proof of concept or benchmark , going from brainstorming sessions to converging on a design and ultimately building either a portion or entire production-ready feature that is potentially ready for production and usable by end customers
Design and implement differentiated features in a fast-pace environment with focus on scalability, performance, geo distribution, and availability
Passion to bring out innovative ideas and try out new solutions, while being open minded to feedback from the team
Relentless focus on quality and automation
What you will bring:
Currently enrolled as a student in an accredited PhD degree program within the United States graduating between December 2026 - Summer 2028
Maximum of 0-3 years of Professional/Full time relevant work experience (Not including Internships/Co-ops)
Programming expertise. Proficient with object-oriented programming concepts, design patterns, and the complete SDLC. Be comfortable with algorithms and data structures, such as dynamic array, linked list, stack, queue, binary search, binary search tree, hash map, depth first search, breadth first search, and merge sort
A go-getter. Seeks new opportunities, doesn’t shy away from challenges, and brings energy and enthusiasm to the office every day
Key skills: C++, Java, Python, Scala, JavaScript or any other Programming language. Solid understanding of OOP/OOD , distributed systems, cloud-related knowledge, distributed cloud databases, Hadoop, Kubernetes. Interest in Full Stack development (Front and Back)
Proficient with design of highly available fault tolerant distributed systems
Ability to build high performance, highly scalable, and highly available databases and database management software in a distributed environment
Strong applied experience. You’ve built, broken, and rebuilt software applications in Private Projects, Academic Projects, Prior Internships and/or Previous Work experience
Cr