Job Specifications
Building data-driven AI applications and agents is too complex, even for advanced developers.
This new generation of applications need fast, secure access to data across disparate systems, the ability to search and reason over that data, and infrastructure that’s reliable enough to run in production. Today, teams often need to piece together query engines, search systems, caches, and AI tooling, adding significant complexity along the way.
At Spice AI, we simplify this by unifying query federation, search, and AI into a single runtime for building intelligent applications. Our mission is to make building AI-powered software as easy building a modern web application and help developers build the next generation of applications. We offer both open source and fully managed cloud deployments.
For a deeper dive into the vision, watch Founder and CEO Luke Kim'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.
At Spice AI, we hire for MEI: Merit, Excellence, and Intelligence. We're looking for exceptional, ambitious builders who are driven to solve hard problems and push the boundaries of what's possible for AI.
This role requires a Forward Deployed Engineer to embed with customers and partners, accelerating adoption through direct engineering contributions. Responsibilities include deploying, optimizing, and extending Spice.ai solutions in production environments, while collaborating on product improvements.
If open source, distributed systems, and real-world search & AI deployment drive you, apply.
Who We Are Looking For
An exceptional engineer
A problem solver who starts with customer problems and solves them with technology
A thinker who challenges the status quo, rejects the current world model, and builds better for everyone
A positive force who asks what's possible instead of focusing on limitations
Someone who views work as meaningful, not just a job
Comfortable with ambiguity and unknowns, leading by creating clarity
Passionate about high performance with high standards
What We're Looking For
5+ years in engineering roles, with focus on deploying data, search, and AI systems in enterprise environments
Experience designing, implementing, and scaling production database engines, distributed systems, search engines, and data & AI pipelines
Track record of strong design, architectural, engineering, and product decisions in customer-facing contexts
Excellent communication skills
Ability to ramp up quickly and deliver impact
Contributions to open-source projects preferred
Experience with Apache infrastructure, CNCF stack, or cloud-native development
Deep knowledge of databases, data warehousing, data lakes, search, virtualization, and mesh principles
Proficiency with Databricks, Snowflake, Starburst, Dremio, ElasticSearch, or similar
Strong SQL skills in queries, syntax, modeling, and optimizations
Familiarity with data storage like HDFS, Amazon S3, and relational databases
Skills in data integration, including ETL/ELT, ingestion, and transformation
Ability to tune performance and optimize systems
Knowledge of data security, privacy, authentication, authorization, and encryption
Problem-solving for complex data challenges
Presentation skills for technical and executive audiences
Ability to explain concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders
Relationship-building with customers and partners
Willingness to travel 20%+ based on customer needs
In This Role, You'll
Embed with enterprise customers and partners to deploy Spice.ai OSS/Enterprise and Cloud Platform in production
Build, configure, and optimize proof-of-concepts and deployments for performance, scalability, and security
Collaborate with engineering to incorporate customer feedback into core product features
Resolve technical blockers, debug issues, and extend Spice.ai capabilities on-site or remotely
Design end-to-end architectures using Spice.ai for data querying, search, and AI inference
Identify expansion opportunities and drive adoption of new features
Work side-by-side with founders as a leader in customer success engineering
Contribute to Spice.ai OSS improvements based on real-world usage
Own initiatives to refine offerings and deliver superior developer experiences
Your First 90 Days
First week: Deploy a Spice.ai instance for a customer scenario and fix a deployment issue
First month: Ramp up, lead a POC deployment, and contribute optimizations to Spice.ai OSS
30-60 days: Take ownership of a customer deployment area, from architecture to production rollout
60-90 days: Propose and execute a technical strategy for scaling customer integrations
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