Senior Staff Software Engineer (AI)

TL;DR

Senior Staff Software Engineer (AI): Architecting and delivering a highly scalable, fault-tolerant platform for declarative pipelines and materialized views serving thousands of production customers with an accent on declarative dataflow processing, resource management, and efficient storage structures. Focus on performance diagnosis on large production clusters, low-level debugging, and optimization that moves the needle on cost and latency.

Location: Mountain View, California; San Francisco, California

Salary: $228,600 — $314,250 USD

Company

Databricks builds the world's leading data and AI platform, used by tens of thousands of organizations to turn raw data into decisions that matter.

What you will do

• Architect and deliver a highly scalable, fault-tolerant platform for declarative pipelines and materialized views serving thousands of production customers.
• Turn ambiguous, large-scale technical challenges into clear execution plans that ship incrementally and hold up at exabyte scale.
• Bridge the gap between research and production by bringing ideas from the academic literature or internal R&D into systems that solve real customer problems.
• Lead deep systems work: performance diagnosis on large production clusters, low-level debugging, and optimization that moves the needle on cost and latency.
• Shape product direction alongside engineering and product leadership, owning technical strategy from design through delivery.
• Drive complex, multi-team technical initiatives that require sustained coordination and clear technical judgment.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience building, operating, and evolving large-scale distributed systems in production.
• Deep expertise in one or more of: database internals, storage systems, distributed computing, streaming systems, language/API design, or performance engineering.
• Track record of executing against a multi-year technical vision through well-sequenced incremental milestones.
• Strong algorithmic foundations with the practical judgment to know when they matter and when simpler solutions win.
• A bias toward customer impact over technical novelty for its own sake.
• Experience building alignment across teams and driving initiatives from conception through customer adoption.

Culture & Benefits

• Databricks strives to provide comprehensive benefits and perks that meet the needs of all of its employees.
• Fostering a diverse and inclusive culture where everyone can excel.
• Hiring practices are inclusive and meet equal employment opportunity standards.