Senior Forward Deployed Engineer (Data & AI)

Location: London, United Kingdom — Hybrid; travel to customers 20% of the time.

Company

Databricks is a Data and AI company providing a unified platform for data engineering, analytics, machine learning, applications, and AI.

What you will do

• Lead customer technical projects by designing and delivering production-grade data, AI, and application systems.
• Own architecture and design decisions, ensuring solutions are secure, scalable, and aligned with customer needs and Databricks best practices.
• Design and build reference architectures, custom applications, data ingestion systems, and ML/AI model integrations.
• Embed with customer teams, guide architecture and adoption, provide training, and work with stakeholders from technical contributors to executives.
• Collaborate with engagement managers, project managers, architects, engineering, product, support, and customer teams to deliver measurable outcomes.
• Develop reusable accelerators, frameworks, and best practices while providing product and implementation feedback.

Requirements

• Strong experience in data engineering, data platforms and analytics, or software engineering.
• Ability to write code 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 using Apache Spark and knowledge of Spark runtime internals.
• Familiarity with CI/CD, MLOps, ML/AI models, and AI APIs for production deployments.
• Experience designing and deploying performant end-to-end data architectures and applications combining data pipelines, ML/AI models, and user-facing interfaces.
• Technical project delivery experience, including scope and timeline management, measurable outcomes, and translating complex concepts into actionable solutions.
• Documentation and whiteboarding skills, plus experience working with enterprise clients and managing conflicts across broad stakeholder groups.
• Curiosity, adaptability, and eagerness to explore technologies supporting Databricks-based solution deployment and integration.

Nice to have

• Databricks Certification.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid work in London with customer travel required approximately 20% of the time.
• Customer-facing, hands-on work at the intersection of technology and business impact.
• Inclusive culture committed to equal employment opportunity and diversity.
• Comprehensive benefits and perks, with details varying by region.