Senior Staff Software Engineer - Delta

Databricks
London, United Kingdom
Last week
Seniority
Senior
Posted
9 Apr 2026 (Last week)

P-1127

At Databricks, we are obsessed with enabling data teams to solve the world's toughest problems, from security threat detection to cancer drug development. We do this by building and running the world's best data and AI infrastructure platform, so our customers can focus on the high value challenges that are central to their own missions.

Our engineering teams build highly technical products that fulfill real, important needs in the world. We develop and operate one of the largest scale software platforms. The fleet consists of millions of virtual machines, generating terabytes of logs and processing exabytes of data per day. At our scale, we regularly observe cloud hardware, network, and operating system faults, and our software must gracefully shield our customers from any of the above.

The Delta DML team owns the core write-path operations for Delta Lake, the open-source storage layer behind the Databricks Lakehouse. Our mission is to deliver industry-leading performance and a seamless user experience at massive scale, with most data written in Databricks flowing through our platform. We drive performance innovations like Low Shuffle Merge and Deletion Vectors and actively contribute to open source efforts to unify Delta and Iceberg formats.

We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Senior Staff Software Engineer to join our backend team. In this role, you will be instrumental in designing, developing, and maintaining robust backend systems that power Databricks workspaces. You will build the next-generation platform for serving workspace assets, ensuring high QPS, low latency, reliable, and performant systems, proactively addressing the future growth challenges. Additionally, as a senior member of the team, you will provide technical leadership, mentorship, and guidance to junior engineers, contributing to the overall improvement of team coding practices and system designs.

The Impact you will have:

  • Solve real business needs at large scale by applying your software engineering.
  • Low level systems debugging, performance measurement, and optimization on large production clusters.
  • Build architecture design, influence product roadmap, and take ownership and responsibility over new projects.
  • Introduce tools to allow greater automation and operability of services.
  • Use your deep experience to help prevent and investigate production issues.
  • Plan and lead complicated technical projects that work with several teams within the company.
  • Contribute as a technical team lead by mentoring others, lead sprint planning, delegating work and assignments to team members and participate in project planning.

What we look for:

  • 15+ years industry experience building and supporting large-scale distributed systems.
  • Comfortable working towards a multi-year vision with incremental deliverables.
  • Motivated by delivering customer value and impact.
  • Strong foundation in algorithms and data structures and their real-world use cases.
  • Experience driving company initiatives towards customer satisfaction.
  • BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science or related majors, or equivalent experience.

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 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.

Related Jobs

View all jobs

Senior/Staff Software Engineer, Back End Leaning

Synthesia London, United Kingdom
Remote

Senior Staff Software Engineer - Unity Catalog Runtime Enforcement

Databricks London, United Kingdom

Staff Software Engineer - Biometrics

Entrust London, United Kingdom

Staff Software Engineer - Biometrics

Entrust Portugal

Software Engineer (Principal level)

Synthesia London, United Kingdom
Hybrid

(Alignment) Research Engineer/Research Scientist - Red Team

AI Safety Institute London, United Kingdom

Subscribe to Future Tech Insights for the latest jobs & insights, direct to your inbox.

By subscribing, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of service.

Industry Insights

Discover insightful articles, industry insights, expert tips, and curated resources.

Where to Advertise Machine Learning Jobs in the UK (2026 Guide)

Advertising machine learning jobs in the UK requires a different approach to most technical hiring. The candidate pool is small, highly specialised and in demand across AI labs, financial services, healthcare, autonomous systems and consumer technology simultaneously. Machine learning engineers and researchers move between roles through professional networks, conference communities and specialist platforms — not general job boards where ML roles compete with unrelated software engineering positions for the same audience. This guide, published by MachineLearningJobs.co.uk, covers where to advertise machine learning roles in the UK in 2026, how the main platforms compare, what employers should expect to pay, and what the data says about hiring across different role types.

New Machine Learning Employers to Watch in 2026: UK and Global Companies Driving ML Innovation

Machine learning (ML) has transitioned from a specialised field into a core business capability. In 2026, organisations across healthcare, finance, robotics, autonomous systems, natural language processing, and analytics are expanding their machine learning teams to build scalable intelligent products and services. For professionals exploring opportunities on www.MachineLearningJobs.co.uk , understanding the companies that are scaling, winning investment, or securing high‑impact contracts is crucial. This article highlights the new and high‑growth machine learning employers to watch in 2026, focusing on UK innovators, international firms with significant UK presence, and global platforms investing in machine learning talent locally.

How Many Machine Learning Tools Do You Need to Know to Get a Machine Learning Job?

Machine learning is one of the most exciting and rapidly growing areas of tech. But for job seekers it can also feel like a maze of tools, frameworks and platforms. One job advert wants TensorFlow and Keras. Another mentions PyTorch, scikit-learn and Spark. A third lists Mlflow, Docker, Kubernetes and more. With so many names out there, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you must learn everything just to be competitive. Here’s the honest truth most machine learning hiring managers won’t say out loud: 👉 They don’t hire you because you know every tool. They hire you because you can solve real problems with the tools you know. Tools are important — no doubt — but context, judgement and outcomes matter far more. So how many machine learning tools do you actually need to know to get a job? For most job seekers, the real number is far smaller than you think — and more logically grouped. This guide breaks down exactly what employers expect, which tools are core, which are role-specific, and how to structure your learning for real career results.