• Define and drive technical direction for database performance optimization and hardware-aware database architecture. • Lead the design and implementation of advanced database optimizations focused on scalability, efficiency, and workload performance. • Solve complex performance challenges across the full system stack, including database engines, query execution, transaction processing, concurrency control, storage engines, operating systems, and hardware platforms. • Design and develop optimizations leveraging modern hardware architectures, including multi-core CPUs, large-memory systems, NUMA platforms, CXL memory, RDMA networking, and advanced storage technologies. • Improve database execution engines, caching mechanisms, memory management, storage systems, and workload scheduling. • Analyze system behavior and identify bottlenecks using profiling, tracing, hardware performance counters, and low-level performance analysis. • Develop benchmarks, workload models, and methodologies to evaluate scalability, efficiency, and architectural tradeoffs. • Collaborate with database kernel, infrastructure, and engineering teams to influence architecture decisions and deliver high-impact improvements. • Mentor senior engineers and contribute to building technical expertise across the organization. • Drive innovation through research, prototyping, technical analysis, and architectural improvements.