Staff Software Engineer, Foundational Model Serving

Overview

At Databricks, we are passionate about enabling data teams to solve the worlds toughest problems from making the next mode of transportation a reality to accelerating the development of medical breakthroughs. We do this by building and running the worlds best data and AI infrastructure platform so our customers can use deep data insights to improve their business.

Foundation Model Serving is the API Product for hosting and serving frontier AI model inference for open?source models like Llama, Qwen, and GPT?OSS as well as proprietary models like Claude and OpenAI GPT. For this role, no prior ML or AI experience is necessary. Were looking for engineers who have owned high?scale operationally sensitive systems such as customer?facing APIs, Edge Gateways, ML inference, or similar services and have an interest in building LLM APIs and runtimes at scale.

As a Staff Engineer, youll play a critical role in shaping both the product experience and core infrastructure. You will design and build systems that enable high?throughput, low?latency inference on GPU workloads with frontier models, influence architectural direction, and collaborate closely across platform, product, infrastructure, and research teams to deliver a world?class foundation model API product.

Impact you will have

• Design and implement core systems and APIs that power Databricks Foundation Model Serving, ensuring scalability, reliability, and operational excellence.
• Partner with product and engineering leadership to define the technical roadmap and long?term architecture for serving workloads.
• Drive architectural decisions and trade?offs to optimize performance, throughput, autoscaling, and operational efficiency for GPU serving workloads.
• Contribute directly to key components across the serving infrastructure from working in systems like vLLM and SGLang to creating token?based rate limiters and optimizers ensuring smooth and efficient operations at scale.
• Collaborate cross?functionally with product, platform, and research teams to translate customer needs into reliable and performant systems.
• Establish best practices for code quality, testing, and operational readiness, and mentor other engineers through design reviews and technical guidance.
• Represent the team in cross?organizational technical discussions and influence Databricks broader AI platform strategy.

What we look for

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 : $192,000 $260,000 USD

About Databricks

Databricks is the data and AI company. More than 10,000 organizations worldwide including Comcast, Cond?Nast, Grammarly, and over 50% of the Fortune?500 rely on the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform to unify and democratize data, analytics and AI. Databricks is headquartered in San?Francisco, with offices around the globe and was founded by the original creators of Lakehouse, Apache?Spark, Delta?Lake and MLflow.

To learn more, follow Databricks on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Benefits : At 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, please visit https : / / www.mybenefitsnow.com / databricks.

Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

At Databricks, we are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive culture where everyone can excel. We take great care to ensure that our hiring practices are inclusive and meet equal employment opportunity standards. Individuals looking for employment at Databricks are considered without regard to age, color, disability, ethnicity, family or marital status, gender identity or expression, language, national origin, physical and mental ability, political affiliation, race, religion, sexual orientation, socio?economic status, veteran status, and other protected characteristics.

Compliance

If access to export?controlled technology or source code is required for performance of job duties, it is within Employers discretion whether to apply for a U.S. government license for such positions, and Employer may decline to proceed with an applicant on this basis alone.

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