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Staff Software Engineer, AI Search

Databricks
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Mountain View, CA$166k - $225kfull-timePosted 4mo ago

About the role

Databricks is hiring a Staff Software Engineer for Search to build and scale next-generation AI Search capabilities, including vector, keyword, and hybrid retrieval. The role involves architecture, developer experience, mentoring, and cross-team collaboration to deliver high-performance, scalable search systems and AI-powered applications.

Responsibilities

  • Drive the architecture and evolution of the Search product, delivering scalable, low-latency, and high-quality retrieval across massive multimodal datasets.
  • Identify and solve challenges in indexing, storage, query execution, and ranking — blending innovations in vector search, keyword search, and hybrid retrieval techniques.
  • Partner with infrastructure, product, and research teams to shape APIs and developer experiences that make it easy to build production-grade, AI-powered and search-driven applications.
  • Lead end-to-end engineering efforts — from design to production rollout — ensuring high standards for performance, correctness, and reliability.
  • Make direct, high-impact contributions to core systems powering search, discovery, and recommendation experiences.
  • Champion software engineering excellence and mentor other engineers through design reviews, technical discussions, and collaborative development.
  • Contribute to long-term planning and influence Databricks’ technical direction in search, AI infrastructure, and data systems.

Qualifications

  • 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.

Skills

Required:Distributed systemsSearch technologies (vector, keyword, hybrid)Indexing and rankingAlgorithms and data structuresSystem designCross-team collaborationMentoring
Last updated Oct 15, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Databricks

Leading Data and AI Platform for Enterprises

Databricks offers a unified platform for data, analytics and AI. Build better AI with a data-centric approach. Simplify ETL, data warehousing, governance and AI on the Data Intelligence Platform.

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