Research Scientist, Infrastructure System Lab

Responsibilities

About the Team
We are the Infrastructure System Lab — a hybrid research and engineering group building the next-generation AI-native data infrastructure. Our work sits at the intersection of databases, large-scale systems, and AI. We drive innovation across:
- Next-generation databases: We build VectorDBs and multi-modal AI-native databases designed to support large-scale retrieval and reasoning workloads.
- AI for Infra: We leverage machine learning to build intelligent algorithms for infrastructure optimization, tuning, and observability.
- LLM Copilot: We develop LLM-based tooling like NL2SQL, NL2Chart.
- High-performance cache systems: We develop a multi-engine key-value store optimized for distributed storage workloads. We're also building KV caches for LLM inference at scale.
This is a highly collaborative team where researchers and engineers work side-by-side to bring innovations from paper to production. We publish, prototype, and build robust systems deployed across key products used by millions.

About the Role
We are seeking a highly motivated and technically strong Research Scientist with a PhD in Computer Science, Database, Information Retrieval, or a related field to join our team. You will work on designing and optimizing state-of-the-art vector indexing algorithms to power large-scale similarity search, filtered search, and hybrid retrieval use cases.
Your work will directly contribute to the next-generation vector database infrastructure that supports real-time and offline retrieval across billions or even trillions of high-dimensional vectors.

Why Join Us
- Work on problems at the frontier of AI x systems with huge practical impact.
- Collaborate with a world-class team of researchers and engineers.
- Opportunity to publish, attend conferences, and contribute to open-source.
- Competitive compensation, generous research support, and a culture of innovation.

Responsibilities
- Research and develop new algorithms for approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) search, especially for filtered, hybrid, or disk-based scenarios.
- Optimize existing algorithms for scalability, low latency, memory footprint, and hybrid search support.
- Collaborate with engineering teams to prototype, benchmark, and productionize indexing solutions.
- Contribute to academic publications, open-source libraries, or internal technical documentation.
- Stay current with research trends in vector search, retrieval systems, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), large language models (LLMs), and related areas.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications
- PhD in Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field.
- Strong publication record in top-tier venues (e.g., SIGMOD, VLDB, SIGIR, NeurIPS, ICML, etc.) related to vector search, indexing, IR, or ML.
- Deep understanding of ANN algorithms, quantization, graph-based indexes, and partition-based indexes.
- Strong system-level thinking: ability to profile, benchmark, and optimize performance across CPU, memory, and storage layers.
- Proficiency in C++ and/or Python, with experience in implementing and benchmarking algorithms.

Preferred Qualifications
- Experience building or contributing to vector databases or retrieval engines in production.
- Familiarity with frameworks like FAISS, ScaNN, HNSWLib, or DiskANN.
- Understanding of distributed systems and/or GPU-accelerated search.
- Experience with hybrid search (dense + sparse), multi-modal retrieval, or retrieval for LLMs.
- Passion for bridging theory and practice in production-scale systems.

Job Information

【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Annually)

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $137750 - $237500 annually.​

Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units.​

Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others. Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure).​

The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.​

For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates:​

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:​

1. Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;​

2. Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and​

3. Exercising sound judgment.​

About Us

Founded in 2012, ByteDance's mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. With a suite of more than a dozen products, including TikTok, Lemon8, CapCut and Pico as well as platforms specific to the China market, including Toutiao, Douyin, and Xigua, ByteDance has made it easier and more fun for people to connect with, consume, and create content.​

Why Join ByteDance

Inspiring creativity is at the core of ByteDance's mission. Our innovative products are built to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect – and our global, diverse teams make that possible. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and enrich life - a mission we work towards every day.​

As ByteDancers, we strive to do great things with great people. We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. By constantly iterating and fostering an "Always Day 1" mindset, we achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our Company, and our users. When we create and grow together, the possibilities are limitless. Join us.​

Diversity & Inclusion​

ByteDance is committed to creating an inclusive space where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. Our platform connects people from across the globe and so does our workplace. At ByteDance, our mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. To achieve that goal, we are committed to celebrating our diverse voices and to creating an environment that reflects the many communities we reach. We are passionate about this and hope you are too.​

Reasonable Accommodation

ByteDance is committed to providing reasonable accommodations in our recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, sincerely held religious beliefs or other reasons protected by applicable laws. If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at https://tinyurl.com/RA-request​