Description
At Databricks, we are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to join our Search team. As a Staff Engineer, you will play a critical role in building and scaling our next-generation Search product, spanning Vector Search, Keyword Search, and Search Quality. You will drive the design and evolution of a highly-performant, cost-efficient, and developer-friendly Search stack that enables customers to build AI applications with accuracy, speed, and scale.
Your responsibilities will include:
- Driving the architecture and evolution of the Search product, delivering scalable, low-latency, and high-quality retrieval across massive multimodal datasets.
- Identifying and solving challenges in indexing, storage, query execution, and ranking , blending innovations in vector search, keyword search, and hybrid retrieval techniques.
- Partnering 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.
- Leading end-to-end engineering efforts , from design to production rollout , ensuring high standards for performance, correctness, and reliability.
- Making direct, high-impact contributions to core systems powering search, discovery, and recommendation experiences.
- Championing software engineering excellence and mentoring other engineers through design reviews, technical discussions, and collaborative development.
- Contributing to long-term planning and influencing Databricks' technical direction in search, AI infrastructure, and data systems.
We are looking for a candidate with 10+ years of experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems. You should have 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 is also required. A strong foundation in algorithms, data structures, and system design as applied to large-scale retrieval and data systems is essential. Proven ability to deliver technically complex, high-impact initiatives that create customer or business value is necessary. Experience leading architecture for performance-sensitive, large-scale systems is also desirable. Strong communication skills and the ability to collaborate across teams in fast-moving environments are essential. A strategic and product-oriented mindset with the ability to align technical execution with long-term vision is required. Passion for mentoring, growing engineers, and fostering technical excellence is also important.