RDQ426R221
At Databricks, we are passionate about enabling data teams to solve the world's toughest problems — from making the next mode of transportation a reality to accelerating the development of medical breakthroughs. We do this by building and running the world's best data and AI infrastructure platform so our customers can use deep data insights to improve their business. Founded by engineers — and customer obsessed — we leap at every opportunity to tackle technical challenges, from designing next-gen UI/UX for interfacing with data to scaling our services and infrastructure across millions of virtual machines. And we're only getting started.
Our Vector Search technology is at the heart of this mission, enabling developers to build a wide spectrum of AI applications — from Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and recommendations to matching systems and product search experiences. It supports scalable similarity search across diverse datasets, including structured, semi-structured, and unstructured content such as PDFs, Office documents, and wikis. This flexibility has made Vector Search our fastest-growing product, fueled by the rapid adoption of Generative AI across industries.
As a Senior Staff Engineer, you’ll play a critical role in scaling the foundation of our Vector Search product by designing and evolving distributed systems that serve as the backbone of real-time, AI-powered applications. You’ll shape the architectural direction, drive innovation that unlocks previously infeasible capabilities, and ensure the platform achieves exceptional performance, scalability, and reliability. Beyond hands-on contributions, you’ll help define the long-term vision, mentor senior engineers, collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders, and lead strategic efforts that create outsized technical and business impact.
The impact you will have:
- Drive the architecture and evolution of the Vector Search engine, delivering capabilities that support scalable, low-latency search and retrieval across massive, multimodal datasets.
- Identify and solve key challenges in indexing, query execution, storage, and ranking — combining innovations in vector search with traditional information retrieval and database techniques.
- Partner with infrastructure, product, and research teams to shape APIs and developer workflows that make it easy to build and deploy production-grade AI-powered applications.
- Lead critical engineering efforts, from whiteboard design to production rollout, ensuring high standards for performance, correctness, and system resilience.
- Make direct, high-impact contributions to production systems — from designing core components to writing performant, maintainable code that powers search and retrieval at scale.
- Champion software engineering best practices and help raise the technical bar across the organization through mentorship, design reviews, and collaboration.
- Contribute to long-range planning and influence company-wide technical direction in search, AI infrastructure, and data systems.
What we look for:
- 15+ years of industry experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems.
- Deep expertise in Search Engines (vector and/or keyword-based), including areas such as indexing, ranking, retrieval infrastructure, and query execution.
- Familiarity with storage systems and database internals.
- Strong foundation in algorithms, data structures, and system design, especially as applied to real-world data processing and retrieval problems.
- Track record of driving high-impact, technically complex initiatives that delivered clear customer or business value.
- Experience leading architecture efforts for performance-sensitive systems (e.g., latency-critical services, multi-tenant platforms, large-scale indexing pipelines).
- Strong communication skills and comfort operating in fast-moving, cross-functional environments.
- A strategic mindset with the ability to align engineering execution with longer-term product and company goals.
- Passion for mentoring and developing other engineers.
Pay Range Transparency
Databricks is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. The pay range(s) for this role is listed below and represents the expected salary range for non-commissionable roles or on-target earnings for commissionable roles. Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to job-related skills, depth of experience, relevant certifications and training, and specific work location. Based on the factors above, Databricks anticipates utilizing the full width of the range. The total compensation package for this position may also include eligibility for annual performance bonus, equity, and the benefits listed above. For more information regarding which range your location is in visit our page here.
About Databricks
Databricks is the data and AI company. More than 10,000 organizations worldwide — including Comcast, Condé Nast, Grammarly, and over 50% of the Fortune 500 — rely on the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform to unify and democratize data, analytics and AI. Databricks is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices around the globe and was founded by the original creators of Lakehouse, Apache Spark™, Delta Lake and MLflow. To learn more, follow Databricks on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
Benefits
At Databricks, we strive to provide comprehensive benefits and perks that meet the needs of all of our employees. For specific details on the benefits offered in your region, please visit https://www.mybenefitsnow.com/databricks.
Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion
At Databricks, we are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive culture where everyone can excel. We take great care to ensure that our hiring practices are inclusive and meet equal employment opportunity standards. Individuals looking for employment at Databricks are considered without regard to age, color, disability, ethnicity, family or marital status, gender identity or expression, language, national origin, physical and mental ability, political affiliation, race, religion, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, veteran status, and other protected characteristics.
Compliance
If access to export-controlled technology or source code is required for performance of job duties, it is within Employer's discretion whether to apply for a U.S. government license for such positions, and Employer may decline to proceed with an applicant on this basis alone.