Associate Forward Deployed Engineer

Databricks is hiring an Associate Forward Deployed Engineer in New York, United States. Level rates it ; you can apply on Databricks.

Level's read on this job

On Level's scale, this forward deployed engineer role is Works on AI ●●●○: the daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
The posting mentions MLflow and MLOps among its tools and skills.
Level classes it as a junior role.
Databricks has 896 other open roles on Level.
Posted in the last few days.

AI in this role

mlflow

ml-ops

CSQ427R342

Associate Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)

Hub Cities: NYC | Mountain View | up to 20% travel to customer sites + Hybrid office expectation

As an Associate Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) at Databricks, you'll be in a hands-on, customer-facing role for builders who thrive at the intersection of technology and business impact. You'll work directly with enterprise customers to build and productionize data & AI solutions on the Databricks platform. This early-career role is ideal for a strong software engineer looking to grow into a technical leader. You will embed with customer teams, ship production-grade systems, and learn the Databricks platform deeply alongside senior FDEs and our engineering organization.

The impact you will have:

Production Solution Delivery: Deliver production-grade systems and reference architectures, contributing reusable frameworks, tools, and best practices along the way.
Transformational Impact: Support strategic customers through transformational data & AI projects, from prototype through production deployment.
Own the Architecture: Contribute to architecture and design decisions for secure, scalable, full-stack solutions on the Databricks platform.
Embed with customer teams to understand their technical and business challenges and help deliver measurable impact.
Collaborate closely with senior FDEs, Databricks engineering, and customer support to unblock customers and feed learnings back into the product.
Manage technical scope and timelines for your workstreams, growing toward end-to-end delivery ownership.
Work with the Databricks technical team, Project Manager, Architect and Customer team to ensure the technical components of the engagement are delivered to meet customer's needs.

What we look for:

2+ years of experience in software engineering, data engineering, or data platforms & analytics.
Strong full-stack software engineering skills proficiency in Python and JavaScript/TypeScript, and comfort working across back-end services, APIs, and modern front-end frameworks.
Solid computer science fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, testing, and version control.
Experience with at least one major cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP), or a strong desire to develop cloud expertise quickly.
Familiarity with CI/CD, and an interest in production data architectures and MLOps, ML/AI models and AI APIs.
Excellent communication skills and a genuine interest in customer-facing engineering work.
Build skills in technical areas, and demonstrate curiosity, adaptability, and eagerness to explore new technologies which support the deployment and integration of Databricks-based solutions to complete customer projects.
Experience with Apache Spark or distributed data processing is a plus. We'll help you build platform depth on the job.
Databricks Certification is a plus, and can be obtained after joining.

About Databricks

Databricks is a data and AI company. More than 10,000 organizations worldwide rely on Databricks 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.

This role is based in our New York (Midtown location) office. Travel to customers is expected approximately 20% of the time.

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.

How we rate this

Associate Forward Deployed Engineer at Databricks rates 70 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Works on AI (AI Level 3 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Works on AI. The daily work is on AI products, without building the model.

●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.

Key facts

Associate Forward Deployed Engineer is an open job at Databricks.
Level rates this role AI Level 3 of 4: Works on AI.
The role is based in New York City, New York.
The job was posted on October 22, 2026.
Seniority: junior.
Applications are handled by Databricks. Apply on Databricks

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

ML OpsMLflow

Also common in forward deployed engineer jobs at this level

LLM AI agents Scala Java Prompt engineering Databricks

Pay

Typical forward deployed engineer job: $182k

This posting doesn't list pay. Use the typical forward deployed engineer figure when pay comes up. See forward deployed engineer jobs

Questions you could be asked

How do you monitor a model once it's live, and how do you know it needs retraining?
Walk me through how you've used MLflow in your day-to-day work.
Describe a typical day in a role like this one: which parts run through AI directly?
If you removed AI from this role, what would be left, and how do you decide what still needs a human?

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: ML Ops and MLflow. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
Show where AI is part of your daily process, not a one-off project. This role expects it to be a running habit.

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