Senior Solutions Architect (Data & AI) - Leeds based

Location: United Kingdom; Leeds or Manchester customer location, with visiting or onsite presence in Leeds 2–3 days per week

Company

Databricks provides a unified Data and AI Platform for building and scaling data, analytics, and AI applications.

What you will do

• Drive technical and consumption strategies for complex enterprise customer engagements.
• Own senior-level technical relationships and advise customers on enterprise data and AI strategy.
• Lead architecture engagements covering multi-workload platforms, enterprise migrations, real-time systems, and AI/ML at scale.
• Develop competitive strategies and position the Databricks Platform against incumbent and emerging platforms.
• Orchestrate DSAs, SSAs, partners, and product teams to deliver enterprise-grade solutions.
• Coach junior solutions architects and contribute to customer-facing thought leadership, workshops, and community engagement.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in solutions architecture, principal engineering, technical pre-sales leadership, or a senior customer-facing technical role.
• Expert coding proficiency in Python and SQL; Spark or PySpark experience is preferred for the role.
• Deep expertise in distributed systems, streaming and real-time architecture, lakehouse design, data governance, and cloud-native platforms.
• Expert-level Databricks Platform knowledge or equivalent expertise in competing platforms, with the ability to learn quickly.
• Recognized technical specialization in areas such as real-time architectures, ML/AI platforms, data governance, large-scale migrations, or industry-specific solutions.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a quantitative discipline, or equivalent experience.

Nice to have

• Databricks certifications.
• Experience at Databricks, Snowflake, AWS, Google, Microsoft, or another leading data and AI company.
• Published thought leadership, conference talks, or open-source contributions.
• Retail or Consumer Packaged Goods experience with executive-level industry credibility.

Culture & Benefits

• Work with enterprise customers and cross-functional teams across data, AI, and cloud technologies.
• Employee benefits and perks are provided according to the applicable regional package.
• Commitment to an inclusive workplace and equal employment opportunity.

Hiring process

• Recruiter screen and hiring manager screen.
• Design and architecture interview followed by a live coding assessment.
• Build, demo, and pitch presentation, followed by a reference check.