Sr. Staff Software Engineer — Observability, Insights & Governance
Lead the strategy and execution for observability and governance at Databricks, impacting performance and reliability for customers.
Skills & Technologies
AI in the day-to-day
Bonus: experience building agentic experiences using LLMs.
Requirements
- Experience
- 12+ years
- Education
- Bachelor's degree
Joblaze summary
In this senior technical leadership role at Databricks, the individual will oversee the strategy and execution of observability and governance across multiple teams, focusing on enhancing performance and reliability for large-scale data operations. Key skills include extensive experience with distributed systems, observability platforms, and strong communication abilities to align cross-functional teams. This position is ideal for seasoned professionals with a background in complex environments who can drive long-term architectural goals while delivering immediate customer value.
Joblaze insights
- Listed today on Joblaze — tracked directly from Databricks's career page.
- Databricks has 809 other open roles including Strategic Enterprise Account Executive - CPG , Strategic Enterprise Account Executive - CMEG, Named Hunter Account Executive.
- 149 active Observability roles on Joblaze right now.
- 42 active databases roles on Joblaze right now.
- 26 active Governance roles on Joblaze right now.
- Salary band is above the typical range for Backend (median ~$166,000).
Quick facts
- What's the salary range?
- Databricks lists $228,600–$314,250 for this role.
- How much experience is required?
- At least 12 years of relevant experience for this Sr. Staff Software Engineer — Observability, Insights & Governance role.
- What's the tech stack?
- Joblaze extracted these technologies from the posting: metrics, backend infrastructure, time-series storage, large-scale logging systems, Governance, Data Governance.
- What seniority level is this role?
- Databricks targets staff-level candidates for this position.
- Is this full-time or contract?
- Full-time for this Sr. Staff Software Engineer — Observability, Insights & Governance role at Databricks.
From the original posting
RDQ126R35
At Databricks, observability and governance are what turn a massive, multi-tenant data and AI platform into one customers can trust at scale. We are looking for a senior technical leader to drive strategy and execution across three closely related teams at the heart of that mission: Query Observability, SQL Warehouse Management, and Account-Level Observability and Governance.
Query Observability builds the performance and observability tooling, ingesting very large volumes of query telemetry and turning it into history views, execution plans, performance insights, and recommendations that help customers run workloads reliably at scale. Beyond query observability, you will be responsible for building observability and actionable insights at compute level, workspace level, and account level so that admins can confidently manage large accounts.
This is a new technical leadership role responsible for setting the durable architecture across all these surfaces, raising the engineering bar of the combined team, and shaping the next generation of agentic experiences that let users — and the systems they run on — investigate, diagnose, and act on insights across query, warehouse, workspace, and account levels.
The Impact You Will Have
- Establish the long-term technical direction across query observability, warehouse management, and account-level governance, and own the multi-year architecture all three surfaces are built on.
- Design and lead high-impact projects that move the needle on performance, reliability, and cost transparency for customers.
- Build the next generation of agentic observability and governance — extensible experiences that let users and automated agents investigate, diagnose, and act on telemetry across query, warehouse, and account.
- Partner deeply with Databricks SQL, Unity Catalog, AI, security, and platform teams to integrate end-to-end visibility and governance across the data plane and control plane.
- Mentor senior engineers, set the technical standards across the group, and recruit top talent into observability, insights, and governance.
- Champion reliable, high-quality software and the operational practices that let a focused team confidently support product surfaces used by tens of thousands of customers.
What We Look For
- 12+ years building and operating large-scale distributed systems, observability or governance platforms, databases, or backend infrastructure.
- A proven track record as a technical leader on teams operating in complex, multi-stakeholder environments — driving long-term architecture while still delivering incremental customer impact.
- Deep computer science fundamentals (algorithms, data structures, systems design) applied to real-world, high-throughput problems.
- Experience with one or more of: observability and telemetry pipelines, query engines and query analytics, distributed tracing and metrics, time-series storage, data governance, or large-scale logging systems.
- Strong cross-functional communication skills — able to align engineering, product, and infrastructure partners across multiple teams on technical strategy and trade-offs.
- BS in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience (MS/PhD a plus).
- Bonus: experience building agentic experiences using LLMs .
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.
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 click here.
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.