Software Engineer or Researcher Intern, AI-native Database Systems – AI-native Databases

Job Description

Research Scientist Intern (Distributed NoSQL Database Systems) – 2027 Start (PhD) | ByteDance

The Tone:
This is a PhD internship at ByteDance, focused on contributing to cutting-edge database products. ByteDance is a global organization building a diverse portfolio of relational databases, distributed caches, key-value stores, and other data management systems that support its global infrastructure. This role is crucial for developing next-generation AI-native database systems that will function as reasoning engines and real-time memory for AI agents across applications like TikTok and CapCut. The internship offers hands-on learning, community building, and collaboration with industry experts, allowing students to actively shape the future of the company’s products and emerging technologies.

The TL;DR
• Role: Internship
• Type: Full-time
• Location: In-person, Not specified
• Pay: $60 hourly
• Team: ByteDance’s database R&D team
• Mission: Building intelligent, multimodal, AI-native database systems designed for the era of large models.
• Tech Stack: C/C++, Golang, Java, Python, Faiss, Milvus, DuckDB, ClickHouse, TiKV, RocksDB, GCP, AWS, Azure

What You’ll Actually Do
• Development: Develop kernel modules or features specifically for AI-native database systems.
• Problem Solving: Solve unique, large-scale, and highly complex cloud infrastructure challenges.
• Collaboration: Partner with Product Managers and engineers from various teams to build backend support for AI-native database service products.
• Discussion: Participate in technical discussions related to the team’s product development and engineering work.

The Must-Haves
• Background: Doctorate Degree (currently pursuing) in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or another related discipline.
• Experience: Knowledge of database kernel, distributed system principles, query processing and optimization, and multi-threaded programming.
• Skills: Experience coding in C/C++, Golang, Java, and Python.
• Bonus: Demonstrated software engineering experience from previous internships, work experience, coding competitions, or publications; curiosity towards new technologies and entrepreneurship; high levels of creativity and quick problem-solving capabilities; experience with open-source systems such as Faiss, Milvus, DuckDB, ClickHouse, TiKV, or RocksDB; publications at conferences like SIGMOD, VLDB, NeurIPS, MLSys, or ICDE; familiarity with GCP, AWS, or Azure’s database and AI integration strategies; prior contributions to RAG, memory-augmented models, or self-tuning database components.