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Platform Engineer (Databases & Storage)

San Francisco

About World Labs:

We build foundational world models that can perceive, generate, reason, and interact with the 3D world — unlocking AI's full potential through spatial intelligence by transforming seeing into doing, perceiving into reasoning, and imagining into creating.We believe spatial intelligence will unlock new forms of storytelling, creativity, design, simulation, and immersive experiences across both virtual and physical worlds.

We bring together a world-class team, united by a shared curiosity, passion, and deep backgrounds in technology — from AI research to systems engineering to product design — creating a tight feedback loop between our cutting-edge research and products that empower our users.

Role Overview

We’re looking for a Senior Platform Engineer — Databases & Storage to join the team at World Labs. In this role, you will own and evolve the transactional and storage backbone of our platform — the systems responsible for reliably storing, serving, and scaling the core data that powers both our products and our research.

You’ll work on problems across OLTP systems, storage, and distributed infrastructure, designing systems that are fast, reliable, and simple to operate. You will operate as a senior technical leader, helping shape architecture, guiding other engineers, and setting a high bar for execution. 

This is a highly impactful role at the intersection of infrastructure, product, and research, where your work directly affects developer velocity, system reliability, and overall cost (TCO) of the platform.

What You Will Do:

  • Design, build, and operate the transactional backbone (OLTP systems) of the World Labs platform
  • Architect and scale database and storage systems for high-throughput, low-latency workloads
  • Own data modeling, indexing strategies, and query performance across critical services
  • Debug and resolve complex production issues (e.g., contention, replication, performance bottlenecks)
  • Build systems that are reliable, observable, and cost-efficient, with strong operational rigor
  • Partner closely with product engineers to enable fast iteration and a great developer experience
  • Collaborate with research teams to support evolving data pipelines and model workflows
  • Drive improvements in reliability, scalability, and performance across the platform
  • Mentor engineers and contribute to building a high-trust, high-performance engineering culture

Key Qualifications:

  • 5–10+ years of experience building and operating production systems at scale, with ownership of critical infrastructure
  • Strong experience designing and operating OLTP systems and transactional databases (e.g., Postgres, MySQL, or similar)
  • Deep understanding of data modeling, indexing, transactions, concurrency, and consistency tradeoffs
  • Proven experience owning systems with high reliability and performance requirements in production environments
  • Strong experience debugging real-world production issues (e.g., latency, contention, replication, failure modes)
  • Experience designing and scaling distributed systems or large-scale infrastructure
  • Demonstrated ability to lead technical decisions and drive projects end-to-end
  • Strong ability to balance performance, reliability, and cost (TCO) in system design
  • Experience operating in ambiguous, fast-moving environments, with a bias toward execution
  • Strong collaboration skills across engineering, product, and research teams

Preferred Qualifications:

  • Experience building infrastructure for AI/ML systems or data platforms
  • Familiarity with large-scale data pipelines, training systems, or model infrastructure
  • Experience with storage systems, query engines, or distributed databases
  • Prior experience in startup or early-stage environments
  • Experience mentoring engineers or acting as a technical lead for a system or domain

Who You Are:

  • Fearless Innovator: We need people who thrive on challenges and aren't afraid to tackle the impossible.
  • Resilient Builder: Impacting Large World Models isn't a sprint; it's a marathon with hurdles. We're looking for builders who can weather the storms of groundbreaking research and come out stronger.
  • Mission-Driven Mindset: Everything we do is in service of creating the best spatially intelligent AI systems, and using them to empower people.
  • Collaborative Spirit: We're building something bigger than any one person. We need team players who can harness the power of collective intelligence.

We're hiring the brightest minds from around the globe to bring diverse perspectives to our cutting-edge work. If you're ready to work on technology that will reshape how machines perceive and interact with the world, World Labs is your launchpad.

Join us, and let's make history together.

Equal Opportunity & Pay Transparency

Equal Employment Opportunity

World Labs is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under applicable law. We welcome all qualified applicants and are committed to providing reasonable accommodations throughout the hiring process upon request.

California Pay Transparency

In accordance with California law, we disclose the following:

Pay Range

$200-$300k base salary (good-faith estimate for San Francisco Bay Area upon hire; actual offer based on experience, skills, and qualifications)

Total Compensation

Base salary plus equity awards and annual performance bonus

Salary History

We do not request or consider prior compensation in making offers

 

Compliance: Cal. Lab. Code §432.3 (pay scale disclosure & salary history ban); Cal. Lab. Code §1197.5 (Equal Pay Act); Cal. Gov. Code §12940 (FEHA); 42 U.S.C. §2000e (Title VII); 29 U.S.C. §621 (ADEA); 42 U.S.C. §12101 (ADA)

Accommodations & inquiries: talent@worldlabs.ai

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