Staff Software Engineer, Search Quality

RDQ326R95

At Databricks, we are passionate about enabling data teams to solve the world's

toughest problems — from making the next mode of transportation a reality to

accelerating the development of medical breakthroughs. We do this by building

and running the world's best data and AI infrastructure platform so our

customers can use deep data insights to improve their business.

Search plays a foundational role in this mission. Whether through keyword-based

retrieval, semantic similarity via vector embeddings, or hybrid approaches that

combine both, our Search technologies help customers find, discover, and

understand information across massive, complex datasets. These capabilities

power everything from Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), AI assistants, and

recommendation systems to enterprise knowledge management, in-product search,

and data exploration.

As a Staff Software Engineer for Search Quality, you will drive the technical

direction of ranking, relevance, evaluation, and quality initiatives across

Databricks’ next-generation Search product. You’ll design and build the systems,

models, and evaluation frameworks that ensure our Search stack delivers

accurate, high-quality results across diverse multimodal datasets and query

patterns. You’ll work across research, product, and infra to push the frontier

of retrieval quality for enterprise AI applications — blending traditional

information retrieval techniques, representation learning, and neural ranking.

Beyond hands-on contributions, you will help define our long-term vision for

relevance and quality, mentor senior engineers, and lead strategic efforts that

raise the accuracy, reliability, and product impact of Search across Databricks.

The impact you will have:

* Lead the technical vision for Search Quality, shaping the ranking

architecture, relevance modeling stack, and evaluation systems that power

Databricks’ next-generation retrieval experiences.

* Identify and solve challenges in ranking, query understanding, and hybrid

retrieval — advancing state-of-the-art techniques in vector, keyword, and

multimodal search.

* Design and train production-ready ranking and reranking models with strong

guarantees around quality, latency, and resource efficiency.

* Partner closely with research, product, and infra teams to define metrics,

evaluation methodologies, and experimentation strategies for new retrieval

features and model architectures.

* Drive end-to-end engineering efforts — from early prototyping to production

rollout — ensuring correctness, reliability, and measurable improvements to

relevance.

* Build and operate resilient, low-latency services for ranking, evaluation,

and relevance signal processing.

* Champion excellence in ML and search engineering, mentoring teammates and

elevating design, code quality, and scientific rigor across the team.

* Shape Databricks’ long‑term roadmap for retrieval quality, ranking

infrastructure, and the foundations for retrieval-driven AI products.

What we look for

• * 10+ years of experience building large-scale search, ranking, recommendation,
• or ML-driven relevance systems.
• * Deep expertise in Search Quality, including ranking models, signals, query
• understanding, and evaluation methodologies.
• * Strong understanding of relevance metrics and evaluation frameworks.
• * Familiarity with vector search, keyword search, hybrid retrieval, and
• embedding-based semantic retrieval.
• * Solid foundation in algorithms, data structures, and system design for
• performance-critical ranking and retrieval systems.
• * Proven ability to deliver high-impact technical initiatives with clear
• business or product outcomes.
• * Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate across teams in
• fast-moving environments.
• * Strategic and product-oriented mindset with the ability to align technical
• execution with long-term vision.
• * Passion for mentoring, growing engineers, and fostering technical excellence.
• 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
• [https://www.databricks.com/sites/default/files/2024-08/us-pay-zone-mapping.pdf].
• Local Pay Range
• $165,300—$219,675 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

[https://twitter.com/databricks], LinkedIn

[https://www.linkedin.com/company/databricks] and Facebook

[https://www.facebook.com/databricksinc].

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

[https://docs.google.com/document/d/154un3e8Xav4BceOSlcYFZRGEuQI54xMxVydRwQn54eQ/edit? usp=sharing].

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.