Research Software Engineer at SLB
Sunnyvale, CA
—
Aug 18, 2026
Sunnyvale, CA
Sep 25, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A research-focused software engineering role at SLB's Silicon Valley applied research center, building proof-of-concept systems in data fabric, ontology engineering, knowledge graphs, and agentic data management. The work spans semantic harmonization of legacy data, AI-assisted ontology construction, GraphRAG, and autonomous data agents, with the goal of shaping SLB's long-term industrial data platform strategy. Suited to a senior engineer who combines a builder's hands-on instinct with research rigor and comfort operating in open-ended, exploratory problem spaces.
Senior level · 8+ years · San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA · Master's required · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 150 people in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 30–220
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
What the occupation pays Median $217,796 (middle half $177,469–$231,052).
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Aug 20, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (7)
The degree requirement states 'MS or PhD … or equivalent demonstrated depth.' Because equivalent experience is explicitly offered as an alternative, the hard degree gate is treated as None per schema rules; however, the posting's primary framing strongly favors an advanced degree and the 'equivalent depth' path is secondary — flagged here for hiring manager awareness.
SOC classification is Medium confidence: the role is primarily about building proof-of-concept software systems (15-1252), but its heavy focus on data architecture, ontology, and knowledge graphs gives 15-1243 (Database Architects) a credible claim as runner-up.
The 'Required' qualifications list several broad capability areas ('data platforms and pipelines, knowledge graphs / graph databases, semantic technologies and ontologies, LLM/RAG and agentic systems, cloud-native distributed systems') with the qualifier 'deep expertise in several of' — meaning not all are individually gated. Each named technology is captured as required since they appear under the hard-requirements heading; the 'several of' qualifier is noted here.
Kafka and Spark appear together under 'streaming' in the Strongly preferred section — emitted as a single skill (Kafka) with Spark as an alternative since they serve the same streaming function in context.
GCP, Azure, and AWS appear together as interchangeable cloud platform options in the narrative; emitted as a single skill (GCP) with the others as alternatives.
No compensation figures are stated in the posting.
Ignored 2 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): ontology engineering, LLM orchestration.
Read the full posting
The employer publishes the full description on their own site — read it there ↗. Or sign in to read it here — it's free, and it also lets you track this application.