Staff Software Engineer - Unity Catalog

P-186

At Databricks, we are passionate about enabling data teams to solve the world's toughest problems. 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. We constantly push the boundaries of data and AI technology, while simultaneously operating with the resilience, security and scale that is critical to making customers successful on our platform. Databricks develops and operates one of the largest scale software platforms; the fleet consists of millions of virtual machines, generating terabytes of logs and processing exabytes of data per day. At our scale, we regularly observe cloud hardware, network, and operating system faults, and our software must gracefully shield our customers from any of the above.

As a Staff Software Engineer on the Unity Catalog team, you will play a pivotal role in shaping the only unified, open data governance platform in the industry. Unity Catalog empowers organizations to seamlessly govern both structured and unstructured data—across any format and platform—as well as AI models, files, and dashboards in the cloud. You will partner closely with product management and collaborate with multiple engineering teams across Databricks to define and execute Unity Catalog’s product roadmap, delivering next-generation solutions that our customers rely on to manage and govern their enterprise data at scale.

The Impact You Will Have

• Build Industry-Leading Products: Design, develop, and ship capabilities that reinforce Unity Catalog’s position as the market leader in data governance.
• Solve Real Customer Challenges: Translate customer needs into innovative features, continually refining solutions to address critical pain points in enterprise data management.
• Set the Bar for Engineering Excellence: Establish high standards for code quality, reliability, and performance, ensuring that Unity Catalog remains robust and scalable for the long term.
• Drive Clear Decision-Making: Tackle ambiguous problems by bringing clarity and strong technical direction to cross-functional teams.
• Lead and Inspire: Provide hands-on technical leadership and mentorship, guiding the team’s success while fostering a collaborative, high-performing engineering culture.

What we look for:

• BS in Computer Science, related technical field or equivalent practical experience.
• Optional: MS or PhD in databases, distributed systems.
• Comfortable working towards a multi-year vision with incremental deliverables.
• Driven by delivering customer value and impact.
• 8+ years of production level experience in either Java, Scala or C++.
• Strong foundation in algorithms and data structures and their real-world use cases.
• Experience with distributed systems, databases, and big data systems (Apache Spark™, Hadoop).