Staff Software Engineer - Backend

About the role

P-1514

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.

Founded by engineers, Databricks has started a multi-year journey to build the best Lakehouse Platform. For this we are building on top of a great foundation but our goal is to go further to build dramatically better products. We want to revisit every component to provide our customers with the fastest, easiest to use and most secure data platform for all their data workloads.

Lakebase enables teams to deliver applications faster with an optimized database developer experience, integration with the lakehouse, and simplified operations. It provides a managed Postgres transactional layer for application state and workloads that combine operational data, analytics, and AI. You'll join as one of the founding engineers to build out both the Lakebase product and our London presence.

Below are some example teams you can join:

Lakebase Platform Reliability : Constantly evolving Lakebase Reliability. That includes cross-functional infrastructure, observability, SLI/SLOs definition and measurements, as well as achieving higher operational efficiency without the need for humans-in-the-loop (both internal and customer-facing), via building AI-powered automation and services

Lakebase Manager (LBM): Build and operate the central control plane that owns the core logic for Lakebase — database creation and deletion, wake-up and suspend, maintaining computes on hot standby, HA failover, and more. LBM interacts with every Lakebase component — storage, compute, proxy, and console — managing the full database lifecycle at scale with a focus on reliability.

Lakebase Proxy: Build the heart of the Lakebase data path — the network edge that every customer touches. The proxy handles all client connections and transfers every byte of query traffic, serving every data protocol: Postgres, HTTP, WebSockets, and Data API. We route and manage large volumes of concurrent connections, solving load balancing, authentication, and data access at high throughput. We focus on performance, observability, and reliability to ensure the data path is fast and resilient.

The impact you will have:

Our backend teams span many domains across our essential service platforms. For instance, you might work on challenges such as:

Problems that span from product to infrastructure including: distributed systems, at-scale service architecture and monitoring, workflow orchestration, and developer experience.

Build reliable, secure and high performance services and client libraries for storing and accessing humongous amount of data on cloud storage backends, e.g., AWS S3, GCS, Azure Blob Store.

Develop product features that empower our customers to easily store and access their data.

Solve reliability problems related to Lakebase.

Actively find causes of downtime and systematically improve or remove root causes.

Help the org define SLIs, meet SLOs, and drive long-term reliability improvements.

What we look for:

BS degree (or higher) in Computer Science, or a related field.

8+ years of production level experience in one of: Java, Scala, C++, or similar language.

Experience developing large-scale distributed systems.

Experience working on a SaaS platform or with Service-Oriented Architectures.

Knowledge of SQL.

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 click here .

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.