Staff Designated Support Engineer

Databricks Databricks · Data AI · San Francisco, CA · Engineering

Staff Designated Support Engineer role focused on providing specialized support and technical solutions for Databricks' largest customers. Responsibilities include advanced troubleshooting of Spark, SQL, Delta, Streaming, and Databricks runtime features, building POCs for AI/ML capabilities, developing playbooks, and training customer teams. Requires deep expertise in Big Data, Spark, ML/AI ecosystems, cloud platforms, and customer-facing experience.

What you'd actually do

  1. Perform advanced Troubleshooting and Root Cause Analysis to resolve performance and reliability issues in Spark, SQL, Delta, Streaming, and Databricks runtime features using tools like Spark UI metrics, Mosaic AI Model Service, DAGs, and event logs.
  2. Build Rapid POCs, Test/Deploy/Monitor the solutions built by Databricks Engineering to address customer challenges and showcase advanced Spark/ML/AI runtime capabilities aligned with their business goals.
  3. Develop comprehensive playbooks and maintain a knowledge base of common issues and solutions for Spark, ML, and AI workflows.
  4. Train customer engineering and business teams on best practices in performance tuning, debugging, and effectively leveraging Databricks Features.
  5. Advocate for customers in business review meetings and maintain close relationships as a trusted advisor and primary technical point of contact.

Skills

Required

  • 8–12 years of experience designing, building, and troubleshooting distributed computing applications
  • 4+ years delivering production-scale Spark/ML/AI solutions using Python, Java, or Scala
  • Hands-on expertise with Data Lakes, SQL-based databases, and Cloud-based Data Warehousing/ETL tools like Snowflake, Redshift, Bigquery, etc
  • Deep knowledge of Spark core internals, Delta/Iceberg, JVM optimization, and memory management
  • Proficiency in AI ecosystems like Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Generative AI
  • Practical experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP
  • Expertise in building and managing CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, and alerting systems
  • 3–5 years in customer-facing roles such as Technical Account Manager or Solutions Architect
  • Strong communication, relationship-building, and problem-solving skills
  • Advanced Proactive Problem Solving Skills
  • Collaboration and Leadership

Nice to have

  • Mosaic AI Model Service

What the JD emphasized

  • complex product issues
  • critical technical challenges
  • performance and reliability issues
  • advanced Spark/ML/AI runtime capabilities
  • production-impacting issues
  • Deep knowledge of Spark core internals, Delta/Iceberg, JVM optimization, and memory management, with additional proficiency in AI ecosystems like Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Generative AI.

Other signals

  • customer-facing role
  • technical solutions
  • complex product issues
  • performance and reliability issues
  • Spark/ML/AI runtime capabilities