Sr. Forward Deployed Engineer (fde) - Retail

Databricks Databricks · Data AI · CA · Remote · Professional Services Operations

Sr. Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) at Databricks, focusing on building and productionizing AI solutions for retail customers using the Databricks platform. The role involves owning architecture, leading design, and implementing end-to-end systems that span data engineering, AI, and application development, with a strong emphasis on customer engagement and delivering measurable business outcomes.

What you'd actually do

  1. Lead impactful customer technical projects by delivering production-grade systems, designing and building reference architectures, custom applications and data ingestion and ML/AI model integration
  2. Guide strategic customers as they implement transformational big data projects including end-to-end design, build and deployment of industry-leading big data and AI applications.
  3. Guide customers on architecture and design; bootstrap or implement customer projects which leads to a customers' successful understanding, evaluation and adoption of Databricks.
  4. Lead architecture and design decisions, ensuring solutions are secure, scalable, and aligned with both customer needs and Databricks best practices.
  5. Contribute accelerators, frameworks, and best practices that scale impact across accounts and influence the Databricks product roadmap.

Skills

Required

  • 6+ years experience in data engineering, data platforms & analytics, or software engineering
  • Comfortable writing code in either Python, Scala, JavaScript/TypeScript, and modern frameworks
  • Working knowledge of two or more common Cloud ecosystems (AWS, Azure, GCP) with expertise in at least one
  • Deep experience with distributed computing with Apache Spark™ and knowledge of Spark runtime internals
  • Familiarity with CI/CD for production deployments
  • Working knowledge of MLOps, ML/AI models and AI APIs
  • Design and deployment of performant production end-to-end data architectures and applications that combine data pipelines, ML/AI models, and user-facing interfaces.
  • Experience with technical project delivery - managing scope, timelines and measurable outcomes, translating complex concepts into actionable solutions.
  • Documentation and white-boarding skills.
  • Experience working with enterprise clients and managing conflicts across a broad stakeholder range
  • Build skills in technical areas, and demonstrate curiosity, adaptability, and eagerness to explore new technologies which support the deployment and integration of Databricks-based solutions to complete customer projects.

Nice to have

  • Databricks Certification

What the JD emphasized

  • production-grade systems
  • ML/AI model integration
  • end-to-end design
  • production end-to-end data architectures and applications

Other signals

  • customer-facing role
  • productionize solutions
  • end-to-end systems
  • data engineering, AI, and application development