Staff Software Engineer, Lakeflow Pipelines DR
Databricks is hiring a Staff Software Engineer, Lakeflow Pipelines DR in Mountain View and San Francisco, United States. It pays $192k-$260k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Databricks.
Level's read on this job
- Works on AI ●●●○ is how Level rates this software engineer role: the daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- Pay on this posting starts 15% higher than the typical software engineer posting on Level.
- The posting mentions Replicate, API and customer success among its tools and skills.
- Level classes it as a mid-level role.
- Databricks has 921 other open roles on Level.
AI in this role
Own customer success and technical onboarding for developers building AI products on Perplexity's API platform.
RDQ427R70
Our mission at Databricks is to radically simplify the data lifecycle with a unified Lakehouse platform for data engineering, analytics, and AI. The Lakehouse addresses major challenges in enterprise data platforms, including reliability, data staleness, operational complexity, total cost of ownership, and data lock-in. Learn more about the Lakehouse architecture.
Lakeflow is a critical part of this vision, helping customers build and operate streaming and batch ETL pipelines that power business-critical data products. As these workloads become increasingly mission-critical, customers need them to continue operating through infrastructure failures and cloud-region outages.
As a Staff Engineer on the part of the Lakeflow Disaster Recovery team, you will design and implement distributed systems that replicate and recover pipelines across regions. A pipeline is more than source code and output tables: it includes streaming checkpoints, source offsets, stateful operator state, table versions, transaction metadata, schedules, and dependencies across a dataflow graph. You will solve challenging problems involving consistency, idempotency, causal ordering, failover, failback, and safe recovery without silent data loss or duplication.
You will work in one or more of the following areas:
- Cross-region replication and recovery for Lakeflow pipelines, streaming tables, and materialized views
- Distributed consistency across pipeline dependencies, table versions, and transaction logs
- Failover and failback workflows with conservative correctness guardrails
- Deep clone, metadata reconciliation, observability, and failure-injection testing
- High-fidelity recovery simulations, game-day testing, and formal reasoning about failure modes
What we look for:
- A passion for distributed systems, databases, storage systems, streaming systems, or reliability engineering
- Strong software engineering skills in Java, Scala, C++, Go, Python, or a similar production language
- Understanding of consistency, transactions, idempotency, replication, checkpointing, and data lineage
- Ability to define and work toward a multi-year technical vision with incremental, production-quality deliverables
- 8+ years of experience working on related systems preferred
- Optional: PhD or advanced research experience in databases, distributed systems, or storage
This role offers the opportunity to build the foundations of resilient Lakehouse computing and help customers keep their data pipelines running when failure matters most.
Pay Range Transparency
Databricks is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. The pay range(s) 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 anticipates 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. For more information regarding which range your location is in visit our page here.
Local Pay Range$192,000—$260,000 USD
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
Staff Software Engineer, Lakeflow Pipelines DR at Databricks rates 65 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.
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.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Also common in software engineer jobs at this level
Pay
- This job starts at
- $192k
- Typical software engineer job
- $167k
This posting starts 15% above the typical software engineer job. See software engineer jobs
Questions you could be asked
- Tell me about a project where customer success was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where technical support was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where developer relations was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where account management was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where onboarding was part of your work. What did you do?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: Customer Success, Technical Support, Developer Relations, Account Management, and Onboarding. 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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