Senior Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) (Public Sector/National Security)

Location: Washington, D.C.; hybrid with travel to customer locations 20–25% of the time. U.S. citizenship and eligibility for a U.S. government Secret clearance are required.

Salary: $182,000–$250,208 USD base salary, depending on pay zone and candidate factors. Additional compensation may include an annual performance bonus, equity, and benefits.

Company

Databricks provides a unified data and AI platform for organizations building data applications, analytics, and AI solutions.

What you will do

• Build and productionize end-to-end data, AI, and application solutions for federal government customers.
• Own architecture and lead design decisions for secure, scalable systems aligned with customer needs and Databricks best practices.
• Design and deliver reference architectures, custom applications, data ingestion systems, and ML/AI model integrations.
• Guide customers through architecture, implementation, evaluation, and adoption of Databricks solutions.
• Collaborate with engineering, product, project management, architecture, support, and customer teams to deliver technical components and resolve issues.
• Create reusable accelerators, frameworks, and best practices that scale across customer accounts.

Requirements

• 6+ years of experience in data engineering, data platforms and analytics, or software engineering.
• Fluency in Python, Scala, JavaScript/TypeScript, and modern frameworks.
• Working knowledge of at least two cloud ecosystems among AWS, Azure, and GCP, with expertise in at least one.
• Deep experience with distributed computing, PySpark, Apache Spark, and Spark runtime internals.
• Experience with CI/CD, production end-to-end data architectures, ML/AI models and APIs, MLOps, technical project delivery, documentation, and whiteboarding.
• Experience working with enterprise clients and managing conflicts across diverse stakeholder groups. U.S. citizenship and eligibility for a U.S. government Secret clearance are required.

Nice to have

• 10+ years of experience in data transformation and warehousing within enterprise-level distributed data systems.
• Expertise in MLOps, ML/AI models, and AI APIs.
• Certification in a Databricks-specific domain.
• Active Secret or higher security clearance.

Culture & Benefits

• Customer-facing, hands-on work at the intersection of technology and business impact.
• Cross-functional collaboration with engineering, product, developer relations, project management, architecture, and support teams.
• Benefits and perks are provided according to the employee’s region.
• Potential eligibility for annual performance bonus, equity, and comprehensive employee benefits.
• Inclusive workplace committed to equal employment opportunity and diversity.