Sr. Deployment Strategist, FDE - Public Sector (AI)

Location: Washington, D.C.; onsite customer work is expected 25–50% of the time, sometimes higher.

Salary: $219,765–$302,220 USD annually, plus potential bonus, equity, and benefits.

Company

Databricks is a data and AI company providing a unified platform for building and scaling data and AI applications, analytics, and agents.

What you will do

• Partner with Sales and C-suite stakeholders to discover high-value public-sector problems, map organizational and technical landscapes, quantify business value, and define pilots.
• Define MVPs, success criteria, timelines, and product requirements; prioritize engineering backlogs and manage scope.
• Lead technical discovery and architecture discussions covering data flows, integrations, security, governance, platform constraints, and operational environments.
• Guide FDE engineers through agile delivery, perform hands-on QA, unblock technical and organizational issues, and manage stakeholders from executives to engineers.
• Drive launch and adoption, including production readiness, war-room management, feedback loops, troubleshooting, and resolution of data quality, testing, security, performance, and operational issues.
• Create maintenance plans and customer documentation, identify follow-on engagements, codify reusable solution patterns, and share field insights with Product and Engineering.

Requirements

• Strong executive presence, communication skills, and the ability to build trust with senior stakeholders.
• Experience defining products, writing PRDs, prioritizing engineering work, managing scope, and delivering complex agile software projects.
• Fluency in modern data and AI architectures, including cloud platforms, data pipelines, data models, distributed systems, APIs, security, governance, machine learning, and generative AI applications.
• Proficiency in at least one programming or query language such as Python, Java, or SQL, with the ability to explore data, work in notebooks, review code and pipelines, and build or adapt prototypes.
• Typically 7+ years of experience delivering complex customer-facing data, analytics, AI, or software engagements, or equivalent founder or technical-builder experience.
• Experience delivering data, machine learning, or generative AI systems into production and understanding integration, operations, and adoption challenges.

Nice to have

• Experience at a high-growth technology company, in a forward-deployed organization, or at a leading consultancy.

Culture & Benefits

• Founding-team opportunity within a strategic Forward Deployed Engineering initiative sponsored by the CEO and founders.
• Comprehensive benefits and region-specific employee perks.
• Inclusive hiring practices and a commitment to diversity and equal employment opportunity.
• Work with strategic customers from initial sales discovery through production launch and adoption.