Staff Software Engineer (AI Search)

Location: Mountain View, California

Salary: $166,000 — $225,000 USD

Company

Databricks is a data and AI company providing a Data Intelligence Platform to unify data, analytics, and AI for over 10,000 organizations worldwide.

What you will do

• Drive the architecture and evolution of the Search product, delivering scalable, low-latency retrieval across massive multimodal datasets.
• Solve complex challenges in indexing, storage, query execution, and ranking using vector, keyword, and hybrid retrieval techniques.
• Partner with infrastructure, product, and research teams to shape APIs and developer experiences for AI-powered applications.
• Lead end-to-end engineering efforts from design to production rollout, ensuring high performance and reliability.
• Mentor senior engineers through design reviews and technical discussions to foster engineering excellence.
• Influence the long-term technical direction of AI infrastructure and data systems at Databricks.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems.
• Deep expertise in Search technologies including vector, keyword, and hybrid retrieval, and relevance optimization.
• Strong foundation in algorithms, data structures, and system design as applied to large-scale retrieval systems.
• Proven ability to deliver technically complex, high-impact initiatives that create business value.
• Experience leading architecture for performance-sensitive, large-scale systems.
• Must be based in or authorized to work in Mountain View, California.

Culture & Benefits

• Comprehensive benefits and perks tailored to different regions.
• Commitment to diversity and inclusion with equal employment opportunity standards.
• Opportunity to work with the original creators of Apache Spark, Delta Lake, and MLflow.