Most Loved Workplace® Certified JobSenior Staff Software Engineer - Backend
Most Loved Workplace® Certified JobAbout the Role
At Databricks, a Most Loved Workplace® certified employer in the Technology space, Democratizing data and AI for every organization worldwide.
<p>P-1385</p>
<p>We are hiring a <strong>Senior Staff Software Engineer</strong> for Databricks' Engineering team reporting to an Engineering Leader. You will be part of the Databricks engineering organization, working with teams that develop Databricks products and features for thousands of enterprises worldwide.<br><br><strong>Key Characteristics<br><br></strong>As an executive engineering individual contributor at Databricks, you will have <strong>full ownership of the product or infrastructure direction</strong> in a major area, driving it from initial development to scalable solutions with clear business impact. You will serve as a force multiplier by elevating stability, reliability, and organizational processes, while bringing deep expertise in large-scale distributed systems. You will mentor senior engineers, contribute to recruiting, and lead high-impact company projects, often tackling complex problems beyond their comfort zone.<br><br><strong>Job Description<br><br></strong>At Databricks, we are obsessed with enabling data teams to solve the world's toughest problems, from security threat detection to cancer drug development. We do this by building and running the world's best data and AI infrastructure platform, so our customers can focus on the high value challenges that are central to their own missions.<br><br>Our engineering teams build highly technical products that fulfill real, important needs in the world. We develop and operate one of the largest scale software platforms. The fleet consists of millions of virtual machines, generating terabytes of logs and processing exabytes of data per day. At our scale, we regularly observe cloud hardware, network, and operating system faults, and our software must gracefully shield our customers from any of the above.<br><br><strong>The Impact You Will Have<br><br></strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Solve real business needs at large scale by applying your software engineering.</li>
<li>Deliver a highly scalable, available, and fault-tolerant engine processing hundreds of TB of data daily across thousands of customers</li>
<li>Low level systems debugging, performance measurement &amp; optimization on large production clusters.</li>
<li>Build architecture design, influence product roadmap, and take ownership and responsibility over new projects</li>
<li>Use your deep experience to help prevent and investigate production issues.</li>
<li>Plan and lead complicated technical projects that work with several teams within Databricks.</li>
<li>A strong influencer or driver in the organization’s roadmap and direction.</li>
<li>Lead a TLG or similar review committee, or initiate and sustain an org/eng-wide initiative driven by engineering needs.</li>
<li>Break down complex problems quickly into potential solutions, knowns, and unknowns, and de-risk (through prototyping/validation).</li>
<li>Contribute as a Technical Team Lead by mentoring others, lead sprint planning, delegating work and assignments to team members and participate in project planning.<br><br></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>What We Look For<br></strong></p>
<ul>
<li>15+ years industry experience building and supporting large-scale distributed systems.</li>
<li>Comfortable working towards a multi-year vision with incremental deliverables.</li>
<li>Motivated by delivering customer value and impact.</li>
<li>Strong foundation in algorithms and data structures and their real-world use cases.</li>
<li>Experience driving company initiatives towards customer satisfaction.</li>
</ul><div class="content-conclusion"><p><strong>About Databricks</strong></p>
<p><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">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&nbsp;<span style="color: rgb(255, 54, 33);"><a style="color: rgb(255, 54, 33);" href="https://twitter.com/Databricks" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/Databricks&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1700237575733000&amp;usg=AOvVaw03FL8fJvOD97ytN02f5G2C">Twitter</a>,&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(255, 54, 33);" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/Databricks" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.linkedin.com/company/Databricks&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1700237575733000&amp;usg=AOvVaw15dLk3q8VxTfHEgCUg7NSt">LinkedIn</a>&nbsp;<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">and</span>&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(255, 54, 33);" href="https://www.facebook.com/databricksinc" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.facebook.com/databricksinc&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1700237575733000&amp;usg=AOvVaw39EcncitnlqV72EG2-RqXJ">Facebook</a></span>.<br><br><strong>Benefits<br><br></strong></span>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 click <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/154un3e8Xav4BceOSlcYFZRGEuQI54xMxVydRwQn54eQ/edit?usp=sharing">here</a>.<br><br></p>
<p><strong>Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Compliance</strong></p>
<p><strong><span style="font-weight: 400;">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.</span></strong></p></div>
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Why This Is a Most Loved Workplace® Certified Job
Systemic Collaboration
As Databricks continues our rapid growth, we strive to maintain a culture as open and transparent as it was in Databricks’s early days. Making sure employees have regular access to our CEO and co-founders to hear directly about our vision and priorities helps our employees forge a connection between Databricks priorities and their daily work.
Positive Vision for the Future
Databricks’ culture principles are derived from an internal study of the behaviors that have led to high impact work at Databricks. These values have a direct impact on company culture and play a large part in connecting teams across the organization. We believe in being customer-obsessed, truth-seeking, operating from first principles, having a bias for action, and putting Databricks first. Our co-founders are fully involved in day-to-day operations, including business and technical reviews, working alongside our team members to ensure that we are always aligned with our values.
Alignment of Values
Databricks’ CEO and Co-founder, Ali Ghodsi leads by example with a focus on truth-seeking and first principles thinking, two of Databricks’ core values that stay true to Databricks’s origins in academia. He champions the importance of data and reason to question biases and inform decisions. Ali remains hands-on with research and development and hosts company-wide weekly all hands, with a CEO “ask me anytime” session at the beginning of every agenda. His transparency and accessibility are core to the open and collaborative culture of Databricks.
Respect
At Databricks, we cultivate an environment where all employees can bring their unique selves and are empowered to do the best work of their careers. To ensure all voices are heard and ideas are valued, we conduct annual culture and pulse surveys and host all-hands Q&As to collect feedback from all employees. We then report back to Databricks on the specific changes implemented from the feedback collected to ensure employees feel heard and that their feedback is valued. In addition, we invest in our seven Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) that offer support and employee engagement events for individuals from underrepresented backgrounds and allies.
Killer Outcomes
Databricks prioritizes offering an exceptional employee experience by investing in tools, workspaces, and community-building. Our collaboration-first, hybrid model offers flexibility with in-person touchpoints like our annual employee kickoff, weekly CEO all-hands with happy hours, and monthly team building budgets. We are especially focused on maintaining a culture of transparency, honesty, and trust, with leaders actively engaging across channels like Slack and all hands while also championing inclusion efforts through ERG sponsorship. These initiatives help our team feel connected, valued, and empowered to do their best work.
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