Principal Performance Engineer, Database & AI Benchmarking

EDB

Principal Performance Engineer at EDB setting performance engineering strategy and benchmarks for database and AI workloads. Collaborating with teams to ensure reliable performance at scale.

Posted 4/28/2026full-timeRemote • 🇪🇺 Anywhere in EuropeLeadWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

Distributed SystemsGoLinuxPostgresPython

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Make performance a core company competency across our database and AI workloads.
Set the performance engineering strategy—defining benchmarks, realistic workloads, regression detection and gating, and clear executive-ready reporting.
Partner with Engineering, Solutions Verification, and Product to ensure we deliver predictable performance at scale.
Influence product direction by identifying systemic bottlenecks, shaping architectural and roadmap decisions, and leading cross-team initiatives.
Build and maintain repeatable end-to-end benchmarks for database and AI workloads.
Evaluate throughput, latency, concurrency, scalability, and stability across OLTP/OLAP and mixed workloads.
Measure and optimize performance for GPU/CPU inference pipelines, model serving, and data/feature pipelines; assess cost/performance tradeoffs.
Develop harnesses, scripts, dashboards, and reproducible environments to run benchmarks consistently.
Produce clear reports, identify bottlenecks, and recommend fixes.
Partner with database engineers, AI engineers, the field teams and product management to define performance goals and acceptance criteria.
Establish standards for test hygiene, statistical rigor, hardware normalization, and benchmark governance.

Requirements

What you’ll need

8+ years in performance engineering, benchmarking, SRE, or systems engineering (database and/or AI systems).
Strong understanding of performance concepts and stochastic modeling: latency percentiles, tail behavior, throughput, concurrency, queueing, saturation, and capacity planning.
Strong understanding of database internals (Postgres or equivalent databases).
Hands-on experience benchmarking databases and/or distributed systems (e.g., Postgres or similar).
Experience with benchmarking tools and harnesses (examples: pgbench, HammerDB, TPC-like workloads, custom harnesses).
Proficient in Python and/or Go for automation and data analysis, strong scripting skills (Bash), skills in eBPF.
Experience with Linux performance profiling (e.g., perf, flamegraphs, strace, iostat, vmstat).
Ability to communicate findings clearly and drive performance improvements with engineering teams.

Benefits

Comp & perks

EDB is committed to supporting our employees' overall well being by offering a range of benefits and resources to promote a healthy work-life balance and wellness.
We provide access to CuraLinc to aid employees in health and wellness tips and practices.
Wellness Fridays extending to December 2026!
Check out our career site for more information on perks and benefits and reach out to our Talent Acquisition team for region specific benefits.

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Hard Skills & Tools

performance engineeringbenchmarkingSREsystems engineeringstochastic modelingdatabase internalsPythonGoBasheBPF

Soft Skills

communicationcollaborationinfluencereportingproblem-solving