Sr. Staff Software Engineer - Unity Catalog Business Semantics
Databricks
RDQ326R102
At Databricks, we are passionate about helping data teams 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. Founded by engineers — and customer obsessed — we leap at every opportunity to solve technical challenges, from designing next-gen UI/UX for interfacing with data to scaling our services and infrastructure across millions of virtual machines. And we're only getting started.
The Unity Catalog Business Semantics team is responsible for defining, consolidating, and governing business metrics and semantic metadata for trusted access across Databricks products. The team collaborates closely with other engineers and contributors to ensure that business semantics are accurate, consistent, and easy to consume.
We are seeking a Senior Staff Engineer (L7) to take technical leadership of the UC Business Semantics team. This individual will focus on query data modeling, driving technical direction, mentoring engineers, and influencing adoption both within Databricks products and in the wider BI ecosystem.
Responsibilities
- Provide technical guidance to multiple parallel projects led by other L6 engineers
- Define and execute the technical direction for UC Business Semantics
- Mentor and grow L6 engineers to L7, building team technical capacity
- Drive adoption of business semantics across Databricks and third-party tools
- Apply lessons from previous BI tools to implement better, more scalable solutions
- Work closely with the engineering leadership and peers to align on strategy, architecture, and roadmap
What We Look For
- Built semantic layer/data modeling/metadata systems describing datasets, metrics, and data models to standardize business metrics. Worked on integration between semantic layers and BI platforms, ensuring tools like Tableau, Power BI, or other BI tools could query underlying models efficiently and consistently.
- Collaborated with product and BI teams to design business-friendly abstractions in SQL and metadata that map to organizational KPIs.
- Developed SQL language extensions (custom functions, new syntax, or dialect support) to improve analytical expressiveness for end users.
- Contributed to the query optimizer/planner of Spark SQL (or other query engine), implemented query rewrites and optimizations for semantic queries to execute efficiently in large-scale data engines.
- Experience connecting semantic models to agentic interfaces / LLM-based BI assistants, enabling natural language queries over structured data.
- Strong track record of technical leadership and mentoring engineers
- Ability to drive adoption and influence product direction in a fast-paced environment
- Experience implementing scalable solutions and improving processes based on prior lessons
Pay Range Transparency
Databricks is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. The pay range 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 anticpates 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.
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, please visit https://www.mybenefitsnow.com/databricks.
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.