About this role
About LanceDB
LanceDB is a high-performance, open-source, cloud-native database built for AI-native and multimodal workflows. From vector search at multi-billion scale to real-time retrieval, feature engineering, and analytics across large-scale datasets, LanceDB powers cutting-edge applications of machine learning and data infrastructure.
We’re looking for a hands-on, technically strong Support Engineer who will be the bridge between our engineering team and enterprise users of LanceDB, helping our customers deploy, operate, debug, and optimize distributed, cloud-native database systems built in Rust and Python.Your Role
As a Support Engineer, you will:
- Serve as one of the primary technical points of contact for our customers: troubleshoot issues, respond to escalations, and guide customers through full lifecycle support for large-scale deployments of LanceDB.
- Work in close collaboration with our engineering and product teams to reproduce issues, debug root causes, propose remediation, and drive fixes or enhancements.
- Dive deeply into distributed database internals: query execution, storage engine, indexing, sharding, replication, fail-over, cloud orchestration (Kubernetes, serverless-style deployments).
- Use and contribute to Python and Rust codebases: reproduce customer environments, inspect logs, build diagnostic tools, run instrumentation, apply patches and configuration changes.
- Develop and maintain knowledge-base articles, runbooks, and support tooling that document common issues, best practices, deployment patterns, and performance tuning.
- Conduct white-glove onboarding for key customers: review architecture, recommend configuration, co-pilot production launches and scale tests, and help them operate and monitor LanceDB in their cloud environments.
- Work proactively: identify recurring issues, escalate product bugs or UX gaps, propose improvements in the support process, and advocate for the customer in the roadmap.
- Contribute to metrics around support response-times, resolution times, customer satisfaction, and help build a scalable support organization as we grow.
What We’re Looking For
Must-have:
- 8+ years of professional experience in a support / operations / troubleshooting role in a distributed database or data infrastructure environment.
- Demonstrated experience with one or more of the following: distributed database systems, cloud-native data platforms, vector/feature stores, analytics engines or big data systems.
- Proficiency in Rust and/or Python : you should be comfortable reading, navigating, and debugging code in these languages; ideally you’ve built or debugged production-quality systems in one or both.
- Strong knowledge of distributed systems concepts: sharding, replication, consensus, failure modes, resource contention, performance bottlenecks, and cloud-native orchestration (Kubernetes, containerization, autoscaling).
- Excellent customer-facing communication skills: you’ll be working directly with high-value customers, so you must be comfortable explaining complex technical issues clearly, managing expectations, and advocating for the customer.
- Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and Kubernetes or serverless deployment models for database workloads.
- Strong sense of ownership, urgency, correct prioritization under pressure, and ability to work closely with engineering teams to drive resolution.
Nice-to-have:
- Prior experience supporting or operating large-scale open-source database deployments (e.g., vector search systems, NoSQL databases, distributed SQL, lakehouse/feature-store architectures).
- Familiarity with storage engine internals, indexing/data layout, performance tuning, and profiling tools.
- Contributions to open-source projects (especially Rust/Python), or experience writing diagnostic tools, debuggers, or instrumentation.
- Experience deploying and monitoring systems in large-scale production environments: logging/observability (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry), alerting, SLOs/SLAs.
- Comfortable working in a fast-moving startup environment with high autonomy and evolving responsibilities.
Why This Role Matters
In our mission to redefine the foundation of AI-data infrastructure, the Support Engineer plays a crucial role: you ensure that our most demanding customers — dealing with massive, complex, multimodal workloads — get best-in-class deployment, reliability, and performance. Your technical depth and customer acumen will directly influence how well LanceDB scales in real-world settings, how fast customers succeed, and how our product evolves.What We Offer
- Join a startup solving frontier-scale data problems for AI — real, large-scale customers, significant technical challenge, and high impact.
- Competitive compensation, equity, generous benefits, and professional growth.
- Remote-first team, highly collaborative, extremely technical, and mission-driven.
- Opportunity to work closely with our engineering team (Rust + Python + distributed systems), influence product direction and build world-class support tooling and processes.
- Accelerated career path: as we scale, you’ll help build the support organization, elevate yourself into senior leader roles (Support Lead, Customer Engineer, Technical Success).