Sr. Staff Software Engineer - Metadata Intelligence

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About Databricks
At Databricks, we empower data teams to solve the world’s toughest challenges—from security threat detection to cancer drug development. Our mission is to build the best data and AI infrastructure platform, enabling our customers to focus on innovation.

About The Role

Databricks Unity Catalog is the industry’s only unified and open governance solution for data and AI, built directly into the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform. It provides organizations with a comprehensive view of their data, enabling seamless governance and discovery across all formats. The platform boosts productivity through intelligent search, automated insights, and auto-generated documentation.

We are looking for senior leaders like you to help shape the vision and strategy of this space. The team’s charter spans:

• Business metadata: capturing and inferring metadata to improve data understanding.
• Lineage infrastructure: building distributed systems to discover data and ML models and track lineage across the lakehouse.
• Unified tagging: delivering a consistent tagging framework for discovery, governance, and cost optimization.
• Governance and observability: creating end-user solutions for unified policy enforcement and visibility.

As a Senior Staff Software Engineer, you will define the vision, architecture, and strategy of this product. You will play a critical role in enabling customers to integrate cutting-edge applications, empowering developers to thrive on Databricks, and shaping the future of data and AI platforms.

Your Impact

• Lead key initiatives for Unity Catalog, including lineage, tagging, and the unified governance hub, by planning and executing large-scale technical projects.
• Architect and influence: design system architecture, shape the product roadmap, and take ownership of projects from concept to delivery.
• Optimize at scale: drive debugging, performance measurement, and optimization across the platform.
• Safeguard reliability: apply deep technical expertise to prevent, detect, and resolve production issues.
• Lead and mentor: serve as a Technical Lead, mentoring engineers, guiding project planning, and effectively delegating work.

What We’Re Looking For

• Proven leadership: strong track record of delivering initiatives that prioritize customer satisfaction and incremental value.
• Technical depth: deep computer science expertise (algorithms, data structures) applied to real-world distributed systems.
• Influence and collaboration: ability to drive adoption, shape product direction, and communicate effectively across functions in a fast-paced environment.
• Mentorship and impact: demonstrated experience mentoring engineers and scaling teams through technical leadership.
• Preferred experience: expertise in data governance (access, compliance, privacy), data lineage, data observability, data quality, or intelligent platforms.

Join us in shaping the future of Databricks and enabling the next generation of data and AI innovation.

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$217,000—$288,400 USD

About Databricks

Databricks is the data and AI company. More than 10,000 organizations worldwide — including Comcast, Condé 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 Employer's 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.