Software Engineer, Knowledge Engine – Query Engine at Exa
At a glance
- Company
- Exa
- Location
- Zurich, Switzerland
- Work arrangement
- On-site
- Employment type
- Full-time
- Experience
- 5–10 years
- Working hours
- 40 hours
- Visa sponsorship
- Offered, according to the listing
- Posted
- Added to The Stack
About the role
Responsibilities:
- Own storage layout, partitioning and indexing across multiple backends (graph, vector, full-text, time-series, geospatial).
- Design the cost-based query planner: choose backends, join strategies and execution order for each query.
- Build fast, concurrent query execution paths to serve thousands QPS while minimizing p50/p99 latency and cost.
- Implement live ingest and bulk snapshot workflows that keep the system available during updates.
- Ensure consistent query semantics during convergence: snapshot promotion, ordered updates and stable pagination.
- Define and run end-to-end checks, evals and metrics to measure precision, recall and correctness of plans.
Requirements:
- Significant experience inside distributed databases, query engines, search systems or large-scale storage engines.
- Strong systems programming skills in Go, Rust or C++ and familiarity with indexing and query optimization techniques.
- Deep understanding of partitioning/sharding, replication, consensus and concurrency at scale.
- Proven ability to profile and optimize latency, memory and I/O across a stack under concurrent load.
- Experience designing consistency models for mixed live and bulk-update pipelines and building metrics-driven validation.
Responsibilities
You will own the storage, indexing, and query planning for a massive-scale knowledge engine that retrieves information across distributed backends. This involves optimizing performance, ensuring data consistency, and building robust pipelines to handle hundreds of billions of claims.
Requirements
Candidates must have deep experience in distributed databases, search engines, or storage systems with strong proficiency in Go, Rust, or C++. You should possess a solid grasp of indexing, query optimization, and distributed systems fundamentals like consensus and sharding.
Key skills
- Distributed systems — in 320 other listings on The Stack
- Database design — in 8 other listings on The Stack
- Query optimization — in 11 other listings on The Stack
- Go — in 218 other listings on The Stack
- Rust — in 76 other listings on The Stack
- C++ — in 116 other listings on The Stack
- Indexing — in 2 other listings on The Stack
- Graph databases — in 5 other listings on The Stack
- Vector databases
- Full-text search
- Time-series databases
- Geospatial indexing
- Data layout
- Latency profiling
- System architecture
- Query planning
On The Stack (as of 2026-10-30)
Frequently asked questions about Exa
Is this Software Engineer, Knowledge Engine – Query Engine role still open?
It was posted on 2026-10-29 and is listed as active on The Stack. Confirm on Exa's application page before applying.
Does Exa offer visa sponsorship?
This listing is marked as offering visa sponsorship. Eligibility rules are set by the employer, so check the details on Exa's site.
Where is this role located?
The listing gives the location as Zurich, Switzerland. It is marked on-site.
What skills does this role ask for?
The listing names: Distributed systems, Database design, Query optimization, Go, Rust, C++, Indexing, Graph databases, Vector databases, Full-text search, Time-series databases, Geospatial indexing, Data layout, Latency profiling, System architecture, Query planning.