Staff Backend Software Engineer- (AI Platform)

About the role

As a Senior Engineer on the Databricks Model Serving team, you’ll play a critical role in shaping both the product experience and the foundational infrastructure of Model Serving. You will design and build systems that enable high-throughput, low-latency inference across CPU and GPU workloads, influence architectural direction, and collaborate closely across platform, product, infrastructure, and research teams to deliver a world-class serving platform.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement core systems and APIs that power Databricks Model Serving, ensuring scalability, reliability, and operational excellence.
• Drive architectural decisions and trade-offs to optimize performance, throughput, autoscaling, and operational efficiency for CPU and GPU serving workloads.
• Contribute directly to key components across the serving infrastructure — from model container builds and deployment workflows to runtime systems like routing, caching, observability, and intelligent autoscaling — 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.
• Lead technical initiatives that improve latency, availability, and cost-effectiveness across both customer-facing and foundational serving layers.
• Establish best practices for code quality, testing, and operational readiness, and mentor other engineers through design reviews and technical guidance.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems.
• Experience in model serving, inference systems, or related infrastructure (e.g., routing, scheduling, autoscaling, and observability).
• Strong foundation in algorithms, data structures, and system design as applied to large-scale, low-latency serving systems.
• Proven ability to deliver technically complex, high-impact initiatives that create measurable customer or business value.
• Experience building architecture for large-scale, performance-sensitive CPU/GPU inference systems.
• Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate across teams in fast-moving environments.
• Customer-focused mindset with the ability to align implementation details with product goals.
• Passion for mentoring, growing engineers, and fostering technical excellence.

Pay

Local Pay Range: $166,000—$225,000 USD

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 visit our benefits page.

About Databricks

Databricks is the Data and AI company. More than 20,000 organizations worldwide — including adidas, AT&T, Bayer, Block, Mastercard, Rivian, Unilever, and 70% of the Fortune 500 — rely on the Databricks Data + AI Platform to build and scale data and AI apps, analytics and agents. Headquartered in San Francisco with 30+ offices around the globe, Databricks offers a unified platform that includes Genie, Lakebase, Agent Bricks, Lakeflow, Lakehouse, and Unity Catalog.