About this role
About the Role Databricks is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for Search to shape and scale our next-generation Search product across Vector, Keyword, and Hybrid retrieval. You will drive the architecture, performance, and reliability of a highly scalable search stack and mentor engineers while partnering with infrastructure, product, and research teams to deliver production-grade AI-powered applications.
What You'll Do
- Drive architecture and evolution of the Search product delivering scalable, low-latency retrieval across multimodal datasets.
- Identify and solve challenges in indexing, storage, query execution, and ranking; blend vector, keyword, and hybrid techniques.
- Partner with infrastructure, product, and research teams to shape APIs and developer experiences for production-grade AI-powered search applications.
- Lead end-to-end engineering efforts from design to production rollout with high performance, correctness, and reliability.
- Make direct, high-impact contributions to core systems powering search, discovery, and recommendations.
- Champion software engineering excellence and mentor other engineers through design reviews and collaborative development.
- Contribute to long-term planning and influence Databricks' technical direction in search, AI infrastructure, and data systems.
What We're Looking For
- 10+ years of experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems.
- Deep expertise in Search technologies (vector, keyword, hybrid) and related domains such as indexing, ranking, retrieval infrastructure, and relevance optimization.
- Familiarity with storage systems, recommendation engines, and database internals.
- Strong foundation in algorithms, data structures, and system design as applied to large-scale retrieval and data systems.
- Proven ability to deliver technically complex, high-impact initiatives that create customer or business value.
- Experience leading architecture for performance-sensitive, large-scale systems.
- Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate across teams in fast-moving environments.
- Strategic and product-oriented mindset with the ability to align technical execution with long-term vision.
- Passion for mentoring, growing engineers, and fostering technical excellence.
Compensation & Benefits
- Local Pay Range $166,000—$225,000 USD annually.
- The total compensation package may also include eligibility for annual performance bonus, equity, and the benefits listed above.
- Databricks is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. For more information regarding which range your location is in visit our page here.