Databricks

Sr. Staff Software Engineer - Observability, Insights & Governance

Databricks$217K — $298K *
Enterprise Technology
11 - 15 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 12+ years of experience with large-scale distributed systems, observability platforms, or backend infrastructure.
  • Proven track record as a technical leader in complex multi-stakeholder environments.
  • Strong understanding of computer science fundamentals applied to real-world problems.
  • Experience with observability and telemetry pipelines, query engines, or data governance.
  • Effective cross-functional communicator across engineering and product teams.
  • BS in Computer Science or equivalent (MS/PhD is a plus).
  • Bonus: familiarity with building agentic experiences using LLMs.

Responsibilities

  • Establish long-term technical direction for observability and governance platforms.
  • Design and lead high-impact projects for performance and cost transparency.
  • Develop extensible observability and governance tools for users and automated systems.
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams for end-to-end visibility and governance.
  • Mentor senior engineers and enhance technical standards within the team.
  • Champion high-quality software and support practices across product surfaces.

Benefits

  • Comprehensive benefits and perks tailored to employee needs.
Full Job Description
RDQ126R35

At Databricks, observability and governance are what turn a massive, multi-tenant data and AI platform into one customers can trust at scale. We are looking for a senior technical leader to drive strategy and execution across three closely related teams at the heart of that mission: Query Observability, SQL Warehouse Management, and Account-Level Observability and Governance.

Query Observability builds the performance and observability tooling, ingesting very large volumes of query telemetry and turning it into history views, execution plans, performance insights, and recommendations that help customers run workloads reliably at scale. Beyond query observability, you will be responsible for building observability and actionable insights at compute level, workspace level, and account level so that admins can confidently manage large accounts.

This is a new technical leadership role responsible for setting the durable architecture across all these surfaces, raising the engineering bar of the combined team, and shaping the next generation of agentic experiences that let users - and the systems they run on - investigate, diagnose, and act on insights across query, warehouse, workspace, and account levels.
The Impact You Will Have
  • Establish the long-term technical direction across query observability, warehouse management, and account-level governance, and own the multi-year architecture all three surfaces are built on.
  • Design and lead high-impact projects that move the needle on performance, reliability, and cost transparency for customers.
  • Build the next generation of agentic observability and governance - extensible experiences that let users and automated agents investigate, diagnose, and act on telemetry across query, warehouse, and account.
  • Partner deeply with Databricks SQL, Unity Catalog, AI, security, and platform teams to integrate end-to-end visibility and governance across the data plane and control plane.
  • Mentor senior engineers, set the technical standards across the group, and recruit top talent into observability, insights, and governance.
  • Champion reliable, high-quality software and the operational practices that let a focused team confidently support product surfaces used by tens of thousands of customers.
What We Look For
  • 12+ years building and operating large-scale distributed systems, observability or governance platforms, databases, or backend infrastructure.
  • A proven track record as a technical leader on teams operating in complex, multi-stakeholder environments - driving long-term architecture while still delivering incremental customer impact.
  • Deep computer science fundamentals (algorithms, data structures, systems design) applied to real-world, high-throughput problems.
  • Experience with one or more of: observability and telemetry pipelines, query engines and query analytics, distributed tracing and metrics, time-series storage, data governance, or large-scale logging systems.
  • Strong cross-functional communication skills - able to align engineering, product, and infrastructure partners across multiple teams on technical strategy and trade-offs.
  • BS in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience (MS/PhD a plus).
  • Bonus: experience building agentic experiences using LLMs .


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.

Zone 2 Pay Range

$217,100-$298,550 USD

BenefitsAt 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.

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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