Senior Staff Software Engineer

Our company

At Teradata, we believe that people thrive when empowered with better information. Teradata Autonomous Knowledge Platform activates enterprise intelligence by unifying data, knowledge and business context to achieve tangible outcomes. With Teradata, organizations can provide agents with full context for impact when it matters. Our solution lets businesses connect and scale on premises, in the cloud, or through a hybrid approach. Teradata delivers real business value with AI.

What You’ll Do

In this role, you will lead sustaining and performance improvements across Teradata’s memory and execution systems, ensuring correctness, reliability, and customer trust under complex, large‑scale workloads.

You will focus on diagnosing and resolving memory‑driven system behaviors that manifest in customer‑impacting scenarios, particularly under AI‑driven and high‑concurrency workloads.

You will:

Drive long‑term improvements by identifying systemic gaps in memory behavior and influencing design, validation, and operational practices across the platform

Own end‑to‑end resolution and prevention of classes of customer‑impacting issues related to memory pressure, allocation, and execution‑path behavior

Lead cross‑team technical investigations involving SQLE, PDE, OS, networking, infrastructure, and performance teams to resolve complex, system‑wide issues

Influence engineering decisions through deep technical insights derived from real‑world system behavior under memory pressure

Diagnose and resolve complex system behaviors driven by memory pressure, resource contention, and cross-layer execution dynamics

Identify and resolve cases that appear as SQL Engine issues but originate in memory or execution‑layer interactions

Provide PDE‑adjacent L4 triage and escalation support, particularly for high‑severity incidents

Drive root cause analysis and translate field learnings into systemic engineering improvements

Drive collaboration with System Performance Engineering to address cross-layer memory and concurrency challenges

Develop and scale memory‑focused diagnostic playbooks and best practices across the organization

Deliver and drive targeted code fixes and enhancements in memory‑ and PDE‑adjacent execution paths when required

Success in this role looks like:

Drives systemic improvements that reduce recurring classes of memory- and execution-related customer-impacting issues across releases

Significantly improves time-to-diagnosis for complex incidents involving memory pressure, resource contention, and cross-layer execution behavior

Enables faster, more accurate, and lower-risk recovery decisions during high-severity incidents

Improves correctness, stability, and performance of memory, allocation, and execution behavior under high-concurrency and AI-driven workloads

Identifies and resolves root causes behind issues that appear as SQL Engine problems but originate in memory or execution-layer interactions

Scales diagnostic capability across teams through memory-focused playbooks, best practices, and knowledge sharing

Strengthens collaboration and alignment across SQLE, PDE, and Performance Engineering, driving coordinated solutions to cross-layer issues

Reduces dependency on individual escalation by enabling broader team capability to diagnose and handle complex memory-related issues

Who You’ll Work With

On our team, we operate at the intersection of sustaining, performance engineering, data engine, and platform engineering.

You will work closely with:

Sustaining and System Performance engineering teams

SQLE and PDE engineering teams

Storage, NOS, and execution‑path owners

Customer support and escalation teams

This role reports into Sustaining and Performance Engineering leadership and requires strong cross‑organizational influence and collaboration.

Our team plays a critical role in:

Protecting customer trust through consistent, high‑quality system behavior at scale

Ensuring correctness, reliability, and performance across SQLE, memory systems, data access, and cross‑layer execution paths in production environments

Enabling Teradata’s evolution to a cloud‑native, AI‑powered data platform through reliable, high‑performance execution of complex data and AI workloads at scale

What Makes You a Qualified Candidate

10+ years of experience in distributed systems, database engine, performance engineering, or large‑scale data platforms

Strong expertise in diagnosing complex, cross‑layer issues involving memory, OS, networking, infrastructure, concurrency, and execution behavior in production environments

Deep understanding of system internals (e.g., SQLE, PDE, or equivalent execution/runtime environments)

Demonstrated ability to lead technical investigations and influence engineering decisions across teams

Strong problem‑solving and communication skills in cross‑functional engineering environments

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field

What You’ll Bring

Extensive experience with OS-level diagnostics and understanding of system resource behavior (e.g., memory, processes, I/O, scheduling)

Strong scripting skills (e.g., Python) to develop diagnostic tools, automate analysis, and process large-scale system data

Familiarity with networking and cloud infrastructure concepts to support end-to-end diagnosis of distributed system behavior

Experience with database execution internals or platform runtime systems

Strong background in memory behavior, resource management, and performance under concurrency

Experience working on high‑severity production incidents (Sev1/Sev2)

Familiarity with performance analysis, observability tools, and diagnostic frameworks

Understanding of spill behavior, caching strategies, and execution‑path optimization

Ability to distinguish between surface symptoms and underlying system causes (e.g., SQL vs memory vs execution)

Experience translating field issues into actionable engineering improvements

Experience working across global teams and influencing complex engineering organizations

Ability to stay current with emerging trends in engineering, AI, and cloud-native technologies

Why We Think You'll Love Teradata

We prioritize a people-first culture because we know our people are at the very heart of our success. We embrace a flexible work model because we trust our people to make decisions about how, when, and where they work. We focus on well-being because we care about our people and their ability to thrive both personally and professionally. We are committed to actively working to foster an inclusive environment that celebrates people for all of who they are.

#LI-SK1

Pay Rate: $156,400.00 - $195,600.00 - $234,700.00 Annually

Starting pay for the successful applicant will depend on geographic location, internal equity, job-related knowledge, skills, and candidate experience. Sales roles will be eligible for commission payments tied to quota achievement. All other permanent roles will be eligible for one of our annual incentive plans, which are based on company financial attainment and individual performance. Employees in this position are eligible to participate in the Company’s benefits programs, which generally include health care, life and disability insurance, retirement savings, and time-off programs. Benefit details vary by country and plan, including eligibility and available options, and will be shared during the hiring process. Additional information is available here: https://www.teradata.com/About-Us/Careers/Benefits Employees in this position are also eligible to participate in the Company’s comprehensive benefits programs, which include healthcare, life and disability insurance plans, a 401(k)-retirement savings plan, and time-off programs. Specific details of these benefits, including eligibility criteria and plan options, will be provided during the hiring process and can be reviewed here: https://www.teradata.com/About-Us/Careers/Benefits