Databricks · 5 hours ago
Staff Software Engineer, Search Quality
United States
Full-time
Remote
Lead/Staff
$165K/yr - $220K/yr
10+ years expDatabricks is a data and AI company passionate about enabling data teams to tackle complex challenges. As a Staff Software Engineer for Search Quality, you will lead the technical direction for ranking and relevance initiatives, designing systems that ensure high-quality search results across diverse datasets.
AnalyticsArtificial Intelligence (AI)Data StorageInformation TechnologyMachine Learning
Responsibilities
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
Qualification
Required
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
Benefits
Annual performance bonus
Equity
Company
Databricks
Databricks is a data and AI platform that unifies data engineering, analytics, and machine learning on a lakehouse architecture.
5001-10000 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Databricks has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (318)
2024 (319)
2023 (227)
2022 (222)
2021 (166)
2020 (64)
Funding
Current Stage
Late StageTotal Funding
$25.81BKey Investors
Counterpoint GlobalFranklin TempletonAndreessen Horowitz
2025-12-16Series Unknown· $4B
2025-09-08Series Unknown· $1B
2025-01-13Debt Financing· $5.25B
Leadership Team
Ali Ghodsi
CEO and Co-founder
David Conte
Chief Financial Officer
Recent News
2025-12-29
globalventuring.com
2025-12-27
2025-12-26
Company data provided by crunchbase