CursorSoftware Engineer, Storage
Cursor is hiring a Software Engineer, Storage in San Francisco, United States. Level rates it ; you can apply on Cursor.
Level's read on this job
- Level rates this software engineer role Works on AI ●●●○: the daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- The posting mentions Grok, Postgres and MySQL among its tools and skills.
- Level classes it as a senior role.
- Cursor has 125 other open roles on Level.
AI in this role
Design and scale the next-generation data architecture and storage layer for high-throughput AI product infrastructure.
SpaceX was founded under the belief that a future where humanity is out exploring the stars is fundamentally more exciting than one where we are not. Today, SpaceX is actively developing the technologies to make this possible, with the ultimate goal of making life multiplanetary and expanding consciousness to the stars.
SpaceXSI is building Super Intelligence to help humanity understand the universe. Our teams are building the full Super Intelligence stack: from our Colossus supercomputers, to Grok models, to our suite of applications, including Grok Bot, Grok Build, Grok Imagine, Grok Voice, and X. We're creating a powerful flywheel where more compute trains better models, better models power more useful products, and what we learn from people using those products shapes what we build next.
About the Role
As a Software Engineer on the Storage team at SpaceXAI, you'll own the data layer that underpins every product surface: the databases, caches, and the strategy for how teams provision, query, and scale their data stores.
Millions of developers depend on Cursor every day, and the future of our storage architecture is one of the highest-leverage problems at the company: get it right, and every team ships faster, every product surface gets more reliable, and SpaceXAI can scale to meet explosive demand. You'll design and execute the path to a robust, multi-database topology built for that growth.
Example projects include...
Designing the next-generation data architecture: evolving our storage layer into a partitioned, resilient topology that keeps pace with SpaceXAI's rapid growth.
Building query attribution and guardrails: instrumenting every database query by service, catching bad patterns before they hit production, and making it impossible to ship problematic queries without review.
Defining the "when to use what" strategy for data stores: creating clear guidance and golden pathways so every team picks the right engine for their workload without second-guessing.
Owning cache infrastructure end-to-end: reliability, capacity planning, and patterns that let product teams move fast without worrying about cache correctness.
You may be a fit if
You have deep experience with relational databases at scale, especially Postgres, MySQL, or similar OLTP systems.
You've tackled database sharding, migration, or decomposition problems in production environments.
You understand the tradeoffs between different storage engines and can help teams make the right choices for their workloads.
You care about operational excellence: backups, monitoring, query performance, and capacity planning are things you think about proactively.
You have strong software engineering fundamentals and enjoy building systems that other engineers depend on.
Applying
If there appears to be a fit, we'll reach out to schedule 2-3 short technicals. After, we'll schedule an onsite in our office, where you'll work on a small project, discuss ideas, and meet the team.
#LI-DNI
How we rate this
Software Engineer, Storage at Cursor rates 65 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Works on AI (AI Level 3 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Works on AI. The daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Pay
- Typical software engineer job
- $168k
This posting doesn't list pay. Use the typical software engineer figure when pay comes up. See software engineer jobs
Questions you could be asked
- Tell me about a project where database sharding was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where caching was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where data architecture was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where sql was part of your work. What did you do?
- Walk me through how you've used Grok in your day-to-day work.
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: Database Sharding, Caching, Data Architecture, SQL, and Grok. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
- Show where AI is part of your daily process, not a one-off project. This role expects it to be a running habit.
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