Sr. Designated Support Engineer

P-1448

About the Role

As a Designated Support Engineer (DSE) at Databricks, you will serve as the principal technical support advisor and voice of the customer for our most strategic enterprise accounts leveraging technical experience and business skills.

In this role, you will lead high-touch, support-driven customer engagements, and provide proactive advisory. You will leverage support trends, ticket history, and operational telemetry to ensure the operational health, scale, and resiliency of customer data platforms. This self-motivated professional will demonstrate high commitment to both customers and internal teams, with excellent communication, project management, and problem-solving skills.

While this is a support-anchored role, you will play a critical role in driving proactive operational best practices, mitigating risk, and bridging customer challenges directly with Databricks Product, Engineering, and Field teams.

Responsibilities & Core Duties

- Technical & Architectural Guidance: Guide external stakeholders on operational best practices and architectural design across Distributed Data Processing (Apache Spark™), Query Optimization, Lakehouse open table formats (Delta Lake, Iceberg), Cloud Infrastructure & IaC, OS, Networking and Containerization (Kubernetes/Docker), Security & Governance, and Data Warehousing.

- Proactive Operational Health & Trend Analysis: Leverage support history, ticket metrics, and system telemetry to deliver predictive health checks, risk assessments, and preventive recommendations - applying deep platform domain knowledge to advise customers on environment scaling, upgrade readiness, and long-term platform stability.

- Critical Escalation & Technical Incident Facilitation: Coordinate and facilitate critical, high-impact escalations by aligning customer leadership with internal Databricks Escalation Engineers and Core Engineering teams to ensure swift, well-communicated resolutions.

- Strategic Support Ownership: Serve as the strategic ambassador for the Databricks Support organization, operating as the customer’s dedicated operational quarterback to align platform operations with business goals and ensure enterprise accounts realize maximum business value.

- Executive Reporting & Operational Governance: Lead regular Support Business Reviews (SBRs/QBRs) for customer leadership, articulating ticket health trends, Root Cause Analyses (RCAs), upgrade readiness roadmaps, and strategic operational trade-offs.

- Voice of the Customer Advocacy: Synthesize customer operational patterns, systemic technical friction, and platform blockers, channeling actionable feedback directly into Databricks Product, Support, and Engineering organizations to steer platform reliability and enhance customer experience.

Basic Qualifications:

- 5+ years of experience in customer-facing technical roles such as Premier Support Engineer (DSE), Technical Account Manager (TAM), Solutions Architect, or Senior Escalation Engineer in distributed data or cloud environments.

- Minimum 3 years’ experience designing, developing, testing, and sustaining Python, Java, or Scala-based applications .

- Demonstrated technical depth in three (3) or more of the following core domains:

- Distributed Data & Lakehouse Architectures: Apache Spark™, Delta Lake, structured streaming, and query execution/tuning.

- Cloud Infrastructure & Automation: AWS, Azure, or GCP compute/storage/networking and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform).

- OS, Networking & Containerization: Linux administration, core networking protocols (TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP/S), and container orchestration (Docker/Kubernetes).

- Security & Data Governance: Enterprise IAM, SSO/OAuth, network security, and data governance frameworks (e.g., Databricks Unity Catalog).

- Data Warehousing & Analytics: OLAP query plan optimization, indexing, and data platform performance tuning.

- Support Telemetry & Trend Analysis: Proven ability to leverage case data, ticket telemetry, and root-cause analyses (RCAs) to identify patterns, mitigate operational risks, and drive case/escalation reduction goals.

- Customer Leadership Influence: Track record of advising and influencing customer technical leaders (Managers, Directors, Lead Architects) on operationalizing, scaling, and optimizing platform environments.

- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, STEM field, or equivalent practical experience.

About Databricks

Databricks is the Data and AI company. More than 20,000 organizations worldwide — including adidas, AT&T, Bayer, Block, Mastercard, Rivian, Unilever, and 70% of the Fortune 500 — rely on the Databricks Data + AI Platform to build and scale data and AI apps, analytics and agents. Headquartered in San Francisco with 30+ offices around the globe, Databricks offers a unified platform that includes Genie, Lakebase, Agent Bricks, Lakeflow, Lakehouse, and Unity Catalog. To learn more, follow Databricks on LinkedIn , X , YouTube , and Instagram .

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.