Databricks
About this role
The most senior individual contributor engineering role in today's edition. Databricks describes this as an executive engineering IC seat with full ownership of the product or infrastructure direction in a major area. The scale described is genuinely unusual: millions of virtual machines, terabytes of logs a day, exabytes of data processed, and the stated expectation that at that size you regularly hit cloud hardware, network and operating system faults that your software has to shield customers from. Work includes low level systems debugging and performance optimisation on large production clusters, architecture design, influencing the product roadmap, and leading complex technical projects across several teams. The bar is 15+ years of industry experience building and supporting large scale distributed systems. Bengaluru.
Who this is for
Required by the posting: 15+ years of industry experience building and supporting large scale distributed systems.
The role as Databricks defines it: an executive engineering individual contributor with full ownership of a product or infrastructure direction in a major area, driving it from initial development through to scalable solutions with clear business impact. The posting describes the person as a force multiplier who elevates stability, reliability and organisational processes, mentors senior engineers, contributes to recruiting, and leads high impact company projects, often on problems outside their comfort zone. It reports to an Engineering Leader.
The real day to day: delivering a highly scalable, available and fault tolerant engine processing hundreds of terabytes of data daily across thousands of customers; low level systems debugging and performance measurement and optimisation on large production clusters; architecture design and influencing the product roadmap; using deep experience to prevent and investigate production issues; planning and leading complicated technical projects spanning several teams; acting as a strong influencer on organisational roadmap and direction; leading a technical leadership group or similar review committee, or sustaining an engineering wide initiative; breaking complex problems into solutions, knowns and unknowns and de risking through prototyping; and contributing as a technical team lead by mentoring, leading sprint planning, delegating work and participating in project planning.
Scale context worth knowing before you interview: the posting states the fleet consists of millions of virtual machines generating terabytes of logs and processing exabytes of data per day, and that at this scale cloud hardware, network and operating system faults are regularly observed and the software must gracefully shield customers from them.
Location: Bengaluru, India, in Databricks India Private Limited.
Honest fit guidance: read the delegation and sprint planning line carefully and decide for yourself. This is an individual contributor role by Databricks' own framing, and there are no direct reports or performance management duties in it, but the technical team lead responsibilities described are real and include delegating work and leading planning. If you want to be purely heads down at 15 years, this is not that job. If you want the largest possible blast radius without becoming a manager, it is close to the ceiling of what that looks like in India.
The role as Databricks defines it: an executive engineering individual contributor with full ownership of a product or infrastructure direction in a major area, driving it from initial development through to scalable solutions with clear business impact. The posting describes the person as a force multiplier who elevates stability, reliability and organisational processes, mentors senior engineers, contributes to recruiting, and leads high impact company projects, often on problems outside their comfort zone. It reports to an Engineering Leader.
The real day to day: delivering a highly scalable, available and fault tolerant engine processing hundreds of terabytes of data daily across thousands of customers; low level systems debugging and performance measurement and optimisation on large production clusters; architecture design and influencing the product roadmap; using deep experience to prevent and investigate production issues; planning and leading complicated technical projects spanning several teams; acting as a strong influencer on organisational roadmap and direction; leading a technical leadership group or similar review committee, or sustaining an engineering wide initiative; breaking complex problems into solutions, knowns and unknowns and de risking through prototyping; and contributing as a technical team lead by mentoring, leading sprint planning, delegating work and participating in project planning.
Scale context worth knowing before you interview: the posting states the fleet consists of millions of virtual machines generating terabytes of logs and processing exabytes of data per day, and that at this scale cloud hardware, network and operating system faults are regularly observed and the software must gracefully shield customers from them.
Location: Bengaluru, India, in Databricks India Private Limited.
Honest fit guidance: read the delegation and sprint planning line carefully and decide for yourself. This is an individual contributor role by Databricks' own framing, and there are no direct reports or performance management duties in it, but the technical team lead responsibilities described are real and include delegating work and leading planning. If you want to be purely heads down at 15 years, this is not that job. If you want the largest possible blast radius without becoming a manager, it is close to the ceiling of what that looks like in India.
Apply on company site
Opens databricks.com, the employer's own application page. Applying is always free.