Staff Software Engineer (Search Ranking)

Databricks

P-1408 The Applied AI team at Databricks sits at the forefront of advancing AI/ML-powered products. Databricks’ customers are continuously creating new assets (tables, notebooks, dashboards, datarooms, pipelines, sql queries, ml models etc.) on the platform. Some of them can have hundreds of millions of assets. Finding an asset is a critical user journey for Databricks’ customers which helps them accomplish their tasks.  As our Search product continues to evolve, we are seeking a Staff Engineer to lead enhancements to our Search Quality. In 2025, we will focus on enhancing search ranking, improving query understanding, building robust evals and growing the coverage of assets to enable seamless search at scale.   Key Responsibilities * Drive the development and deployment of ML based search and discovery relevance models and systems integrated with Databricks' products and services.  * Design and implement automated ML and NLP pipelines for data preprocessing, query understanding and rewrite, ranking and retrieval, and model evaluation, enabling rapid experimentation and iteration.  * Collaborate with product managers and cross-functional teams to drive technology-first initiatives that enable novel business strategies and product roadmaps for the search and discovery experience.  * Contribute to building a robust framework for evaluating search ranking improvements - both offline and online.   What We’re Looking For * BS+ (M.S. or PhD preferred) in Computer Science, or a related field. * 10+ years experience developing search relevance systems at scale in production or in high-impact research environments. * Experience applying LLM to search relevance * Experience in one or more of the following:   * Query understanding * NLP * Text mining * Recommendations * Personalization * Discovery * Conversational AI  * Strong understanding of computer science fundamentals. * Contributions to well-used open-source projects.    Why Join Us? At Databricks, we are building state-of-the-art AI solutions that redefine how users interact with data and our products. You’ll have the opportunity to shape the future of AI-driven products at Databricks, work with cutting-edge models, and collaborate with a world-class team of AI and ML experts. If you're excited about pushing the boundaries of AI in real-world applications, we’d love to hear from you! 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.

Databricks

P-1408 The Mission We are democratizing Data and AI for every enterprise user. Our vision is a world where anyone can master their organization’s data through Apps and AI Agents. We are building the retrieval backbone for two worlds: the high-precision context layer for AI agents and the intuitive search experience for people goal is the same: instant, accurate, and actionable insight.   The Role:  * As a Search Quality Engineer, you sit at the heart of this transformation. You aren't just building a search engine; you are building the contextual backbone of the entire company. * You will own the quality of results for two distinct but deeply connected "users": * The AI Agent: Optimizing the retrieval layer that allows LLMs to reason over data they weren’t trained on, ensuring they have the "ground truth" needed  to synthesize accurate, high-stakes business actions. * The Human User: Improving the traditional search experience so employees can find assets and answers through intuitive, high-recall interfaces. The Technical Challenge This isn't a solved problem. You will be tackling "Search" in its most evolved form: * Hybrid Retrieval: Balancing traditional keyword-based search (for exactness) with semantic vector search (for intent). * Dual-Optimization: Fine-tuning ranking models that satisfy both human readability and LLM-ready context. * High-Stakes Accuracy: In a world of Agents, poor search quality leads to hallucinations. You will build the guardrails and relevance scoring that ensure our AI stays grounded in reality. * Data Heterogeneity: Connecting the dots across structured SQL tables, unstructured docs, and real-time business metrics. Why This is the Place to Be * You will have a front-row seat to the Agentic revolution. If you want to solve the hardest problems in data discovery and see your work power the decision-making of thousands of people, let’s talk.   What We’re Looking For * The IR Specialist: You know your way around Lucene/Elasticsearch, embeddings, and ranking algorithms. * The Quality and Metrics Obsessive: You understand that "relevance" is subjective and love building evaluation frameworks (human-in-the-loop and LLM-based) to measure it. You are obsessed with relevance metrics (nDCG, MRR, Precision@K). * The Bridge Builder: You’re excited to apply traditional Information Retrieval (IR) wisdom to the cutting-edge world of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). 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.

Databricks

P-1408 The Mission We are democratizing Data and AI for every enterprise user. Our vision is a world where anyone can master their organization’s data through Apps and AI Agents. We are building the retrieval backbone for two worlds: the high-precision context layer for AI agents and the intuitive search experience for people goal is the same: instant, accurate, and actionable insight.   The Role:  * As a Search Quality Engineer, you sit at the heart of this transformation. You aren't just building a search engine; you are building the contextual backbone of the entire company. * You will own the quality of results for two distinct but deeply connected "users": * The AI Agent: Optimizing the retrieval layer that allows LLMs to reason over data they weren’t trained on, ensuring they have the "ground truth" needed  to synthesize accurate, high-stakes business actions. * The Human User: Improving the traditional search experience so employees can find assets and answers through intuitive, high-recall interfaces. The Technical Challenge This isn't a solved problem. You will be tackling "Search" in its most evolved form: * Hybrid Retrieval: Balancing traditional keyword-based search (for exactness) with semantic vector search (for intent). * Dual-Optimization: Fine-tuning ranking models that satisfy both human readability and LLM-ready context. * High-Stakes Accuracy: In a world of Agents, poor search quality leads to hallucinations. You will build the guardrails and relevance scoring that ensure our AI stays grounded in reality. * Data Heterogeneity: Connecting the dots across structured SQL tables, unstructured docs, and real-time business metrics. Why This is the Place to Be * You will have a front-row seat to the Agentic revolution. If you want to solve the hardest problems in data discovery and see your work power the decision-making of thousands of people, let’s talk.   What We’re Looking For * The IR Specialist: You know your way around Lucene/Elasticsearch, embeddings, and ranking algorithms. * The Quality and Metrics Obsessive: You understand that "relevance" is subjective and love building evaluation frameworks (human-in-the-loop and LLM-based) to measure it. You are obsessed with relevance metrics (nDCG, MRR, Precision@K). * The Bridge Builder: You’re excited to apply traditional Information Retrieval (IR) wisdom to the cutting-edge world of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). 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.