Senior Software Engineer​/Architect - Search Engine Internals; Text & Hybrid Retrieval

Position: Senior Software Engineer / Architect - Search Engine Internals (Full-Text & Hybrid Retrieval)
** Job Description*
* ** Senior / Principal Software Engineer or Architect*
* ** Database Engine, Search & Document Systems*
* We are looking for senior systems builders to help shape the next generation of document, search, and AI-facing capabilities inside Oracle Database.

This is a role for engineers who like deep technical work: database internals, query processing, indexing, storage formats, search infrastructure, language design, and performance engineering. The strongest candidates may come from database engines, search and information retrieval systems, storage engines, compilers, distributed systems, or adjacent systems software backgrounds.

We are hiring across several related areas, so you do not need to match every bullet below. The common thread is this: you build serious production systems, you understand the fundamentals, and you want your work to ship inside a database platform used by demanding enterprise customers at scale.

** This is not an LLM training or prompt-engineering role.
** The AI angle here is about the data layer: document processing, hybrid lexical/vector retrieval, query surfaces, indexing, pipelines, and production infrastructure for intelligent applications.

** What You Could Work On*
* Depending on your background and interests, you may work in one or more of the following areas.

** SQL/JSON and Document Engine Internals*
* Design and implement core database functionality for JSON and document workloads, including query processing, indexing, optimization, execution, and storage-level behavior.

Performance is a first-class concern. You will profile, benchmark, diagnose, and tune across the stack, from on-disk and binary formats through query execution and optimizer behavior.

This area is especially relevant if you have experience with database internals, query engines, storage engines, indexing, optimizers, or document data models.

** Full-Text Search and Hybrid Retrieval*
* Help build search capabilities that are deeply integrated into the database engine, including inverted indexes, analyzers, tokenization, ranking, relevance, and query integration.

You may also work on hybrid retrieval that combines traditional lexical search with vector similarity search, enabling applications to retrieve information using both structured database queries and modern AI-oriented retrieval techniques.

This area is especially relevant if you have experience with Lucene, Elasticsearch, Open Search, information retrieval, ranking, search infrastructure, vector search, or related systems.

** Document APIs, Compatibility, and Migration*
* Help evolve developer-facing document APIs, including Oracle's MongoDB-compatible API, and improve the experience of moving production document workloads onto Oracle.

This includes identifying compatibility gaps, prioritizing fixes, working with migration and Developer Operations teams, and occasionally engaging directly with customers to understand how real workloads behave in production.

This area is especially relevant if you have experience with MongoDB, document databases, database APIs, query-language compatibility, enterprise migrations, or customer-facing systems engineering.

** AI-Enabled Document Capabilities*
* Design and ship infrastructure where documents are not only stored and queried, but also classified, transformed, searched, enriched, and reasoned over as part of larger application workflows.

The focus is on production systems: indexes, operators, APIs, pipelines, data formats, query surfaces, performance, correctness, and operational reliability.

This area is especially relevant if you have experience with document processing systems, retrieval infrastructure, vector search, semantic search, data platforms, or AI application infrastructure.

** Query Languages, Compilers, and Cross-Model Systems*
* Contribute to query-language surfaces, compiler and execution components, and interoperability between relational, JSON, document, search, and vector models.

This area is especially relevant if you have experience with compilers, language design, query planners, runtime systems, SQL, No

SQL query languages, or multi-model databases.

** What We Are Looking For*
* We are looking for senior engineers, principal engineers, or architects with a strong record of designing and shipping production systems software.

You do not need to have worked on Oracle Database before. You do not need to have worked in every area listed above. We are most interested in people with strong fundamentals, deep systems judgment, and the ability to turn hard technical problems into production-quality software.

** Why This Team*
* ** Real Engine Work*
* This is database-systems engineering inside a production database engine, not a sidecar service or prototype. The work touches query execution, indexing, optimization, APIs, storage behavior, search, retrieval, and performance-sensitive paths.

You will work on features that ship into one of the largest enterprise software platforms in the world.

** A Broad…