Staff Software Engineer (Search Quality)

TL;DR

Staff Software Engineer (Search Quality): Lead the design and development of ranking, relevance, and evaluation systems for Databricks’ next-generation Search product with an accent on search quality, ranking models, and hybrid retrieval techniques. Focus on building production-ready ranking models, driving technical vision, and mentoring engineers to improve search relevance and reliability.

Location: Mountain View, California, United States (onsite)

Salary: $165,300–$219,675 USD

Company

Databricks is a data and AI company providing a unified data intelligence platform used by over 10,000 organizations worldwide, including many Fortune 500 companies.

What you will do

• Lead the technical vision for Search Quality, shaping ranking architecture and evaluation systems.
• Design and train production-ready ranking and reranking models ensuring quality, latency, and efficiency.
• Collaborate with research, product, and infrastructure teams to define metrics and experimentation strategies.
• Drive end-to-end engineering efforts from prototyping to production rollout.
• Build and operate resilient, low-latency services for ranking and relevance signal processing.
• Mentor senior engineers and elevate technical excellence across the team.

Requirements

• Must have 10+ years experience in large-scale search, ranking, recommendation, or ML-driven relevance systems.
• Strong expertise in search quality, ranking models, query understanding, and evaluation methodologies.
• Familiarity with vector search, keyword search, hybrid retrieval, and embedding-based semantic retrieval.
• Solid foundation in algorithms, data structures, and system design for performance-critical systems.
• Proven ability to deliver high-impact technical initiatives aligned with product outcomes.
• Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate in fast-moving environments.

Culture & Benefits

• Comprehensive benefits and perks tailored to employee needs.
• Commitment to diversity and inclusion in hiring and workplace culture.
• Opportunities for mentoring and professional growth.
• Work at a leading AI and data platform company with global impact.