Databricks

Senior Software Engineer, Foundation Model API

Databricks$160K — $225K *
Enterprise Technology
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 8+ years of backend or infrastructure engineering experience
  • Experience with distributed systems, scalable APIs, or cloud-native infrastructure
  • Strong product and ownership mindset
  • Experience with real-time serving, ML infrastructure, or GPU orchestration
  • Familiarity with service-oriented architecture, deployment pipelines, and system observability
  • Strong programming skills in Scala, Go, or Python

Responsibilities

  • Build LLM infrastructure for large-scale inference workloads
  • Shape the FMAPI product direction by leveraging customer insights
  • Improve reliability, latency, and efficiency of AI workloads
  • Collaborate with various teams for end-to-end solutions
  • Influence how developers and data scientists interact with AI at Databricks

Benefits

  • Exposure to cutting-edge AI technologies
  • Opportunity to influence product strategy and execution
  • Collaborative environment with high agency
  • Access to large-scale enterprise use cases
  • Engagement with notable AI model partners
Full Job Description
P-1428

As part of the AI team, you'll build the platforms and products that power everything from data apps, AI agents, model training, model serving, and Vector Search. You'll be joining a high-agency, high-visibility team operating at the frontier of AI infrastructure - with deep ties to research, product, and real-world enterprise use cases. Databricks Mosaic AI is one of our fastest-growing businesses, helping thousands of our customers democratize AI within their organizations. We're building the products and infrastructure that power the next generation of AI.

We're hiring across multiple teams in our AI Engineering org, including the FMAPI (Foundation Model APIs) team - the unified serving layer for large language models across real-time and batch inference, powering model inference at enterprise scale. We are looking to hire high-agency L6 Engineers who bridge the gap between technical execution and product strategy.
The impact you will have:
  • Build LLM infrastructure powering large-scale inference workloads for customers through partner models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini) and self-hosted models (Qwen, GPT-OSS, Llama)
  • Shape the direction of the FMAPI product - from roadmap to execution - by leveraging deep customer empathy and direct engagement with enterprise users and model providers
  • Improve reliability, latency, and efficiency of distributed AI workloads
  • Collaborate with platform, infra, and ML teams to deliver seamless end-to-end experiences
  • Shape how developers and data scientists build and interact with AI on Databricks
What we look for:
  • 8+ years of experience in backend or infrastructure engineering
  • Experience with distributed systems, scalable APIs, or cloud-native infrastructure
  • Strong product and ownership mindset, with a focus on shipping user-facing value
  • Experience with real-time serving, ML infrastructure, or GPU orchestration
  • Familiarity with service-oriented architecture, deployment pipelines, and system observability
  • Strong programming skills in Scala, Go, or Python
Bonus points for:
  • Exposure to platforms like SageMaker, Vertex AI, or Azure ML
  • Built products that support AI workflows


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.

Local Pay Range

$160,000-$225,000 USD

About Databricks

Databricks is a unified analytics platform that provides data engineering, collaborative data science, and machine learning capabilities. The company was founded in 2013 by the original creators of Apache Spark, a popular open-source big data processing engine. Databricks provides a cloud-based platform that allows data teams to collaborate and build data pipelines, run machine learning models, and perform advanced analytics. The company has raised over $1 billion in funding and is valued at $38 billion as of November 2021.
Learn more about Databricks
Size
2,000 employees
Industry
Founded
2013

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