Job Title: Senior Principal Engineer
Position Description: Protingent Staffing has an exciting contract Senior Principal Engineer with our client located in Folsom, CA.
Job Responsibilities:- Enable vector database frameworks such as DiskANN, Milvus, and related retrieval/search pipelines on an FPGA-accelerated platform
- Modify and optimize software stacks so that distance computation and related vector operations can be offloaded to FPGA-based storage or accelerator device
- Design and integrate host-side software paths to issue custom or vendor-specific NVMe commands for computation offload
- Develop and optimize I/O submission/completion paths using modern Linux interfaces such as io_uring
- Analyze existing VectorDB execution flows and identify where offload can be inserted with minimal software disruption
- Debug full-stack issues spanning application software, libraries, kernel/user-space I/O paths, NVMe protocol behavior, and FPGA device responses.
Job Qualifications:- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related field
- Strong programming skills in C/C++ and experience with performance-oriented system software development
- Hands-on experience with vector databases, similarity search, or ANN frameworks such as DiskANN, Milvus, FAISS, or related systems.
- Good understanding of Linux systems programming, storage I/O, and asynchronous I/O models
- Familiarity with NVMe protocol, command structure, submission/completion queues, and storage performance concepts.
- Experience analyzing and modifying open source software stacks for performance optimization and platform integration
- Strong debugging and profiling skills across user-space and system-level software.
Job Details:- Job Type: Contract
- Pay Range: $85 - $95 an hour.
- Location: Folsom, CA (Onsite)
Benefits Package: Protingent offers competitive salaries, insurance plan options (HDHP plan or POS plan), education/certification reimbursement, pre-tax commuter benefits, Paid Time Off (PTO), and an administered 401k plan.
About Protingent: Protingent is an Award-Winning provider of top-tier Engineering and IT talent, trusted by companies at the forefront of innovation — from Software and Aerospace to AI, Clean Tech, Medical Devices, and Connected Technologies. We’re passionate about making a positive impact by connecting exceptional talent with meaningful opportunities and helping our clients build the future.