Databricks Inc.
Staff Software Engineer - GenAI inference
Databricks Inc., San Francisco, California, United States, 94199
About This Role
As a staff software engineer for GenAI inference, you will lead the architecture, development, and optimization of the inference engine that powers Databricks Foundation Model API. You’ll bridge research advances and production demands, ensuring high throughput, low latency, and robust scaling. Your work will encompass the full GenAI inference stack: kernels, runtimes, orchestration, memory, and integration with frameworks and orchestration systems. What You Will Do
Own and drive the architecture, design, and implementation of the inference engine, and collaborate on model-serving stack optimized for large-scale LLMs inference Partner closely with researchers to bring new model architectures or features (sparsity, activation compression, mixture-of-experts) into the engine Lead the end-to-end optimization for latency, throughput, memory efficiency, and hardware utilization across GPUs, and accelerators Define and guide standards to build and maintain instrumentation, profiling, and tracing tooling to uncover bottlenecks and guide optimizations Architect scalable routing, batching, scheduling, memory management, and dynamic loading mechanisms for inference workloads Ensure reliability, reproducibility, and fault tolerance in the inference pipelines, including A/B launches, rollback, and model versioning Collaborate cross-functionally on integrating with federated, distributed inference infrastructure – orchestrate across nodes, balance load, handle communication overhead Drive cross-team collaboration: with platform engineers, cloud infrastructure, and security/compliance teams Represent the team externally through benchmarks, whitepapers, and open-source contributions What We Look For
BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, or a related field Strong software engineering background (6+ years or equivalent) in performance-critical systems Proven track record of owning complex system components and driving architectural decisions end-to-end Deep understanding of ML inference internals: attention, MLPs, recurrent modules, quantization, sparse operations, etc. Hands-on experience with CUDA, GPU programming, and key libraries (cuBLAS, cuDNN, NCCL, etc.) Strong background in distributed systems design, including RPC frameworks, queuing, RPC batching, sharding, memory partitioning Demonstrated ability to uncover and solve performance bottlenecks across layers (kernel, memory, networking, scheduler) Experience building instrumentation, tracing, and profiling tools for ML models Ability to lead through influence - work closely with ML researchers, translate novel model ideas into production systems Excellent communication and leadership skills, with a proactive and ownership-driven mindset Bonus: published research or open-source contributions in ML systems, inference optimization, or model serving 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 $190,900 — $232,800 USD 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, please visithttps://www.mybenefitsnow.com/databricks. 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. Apply for this job
* indicates a required field First Name * Last Name * Preferred First Name Email * Phone Country Phone Resume/CV Attach Enter manually Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf Cover Letter Attach Enter manually Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf LinkedIn Profile Website LinkedIn Profile Website How did you hear about this job? * Are you legally authorized to work in the country in which you are applying? * Do you now or will you in the future need sponsorship for employment visa status in the country in which you are applying? * Do you currently or have you previously worked for Databricks in the past? * Voluntary Self-Identification
For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file. As set forth in Databricks’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law. Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability
Form CC-305 Page 1 of 1 OMB Control Number 1250-0005 Expires 04/30/2026 Why are you being asked to complete this form? We are a federal contractor or subcontractor. The law requires us to provide equal employment opportunity to qualified people with disabilities. We have a goal of having at least 7% of our workers as people with disabilities. The law says we must measure our progress towards this goal. To do this, we must ask applicants and employees if they have a disability or have ever had one. People can become disabled, so we need to ask this question at least every five years. Completing this form is voluntary, and we hope that you will choose to do so. Your answer is confidential. No one who makes hiring decisions will see it. If you want to learn more about the law or this form, visit the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) website at www.dol.gov/ofccp. How do you know if you have a disability? A disability is a condition that substantially limits one or more of your “major life activities.” If you have or have ever had such a condition, you are a person with a disability. Disabilities include, but are not limited to: Alcohol or other substance use disorder (not currently using drugs illegally) Autoimmune disorder, for example, lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV/AIDS Blind or low vision Cancer (past or present) Cardiovascular or heart disease Celiac disease Cerebral palsy Deaf or serious difficulty hearing Diabetes Disfigurement, for example, disfigurement caused by burns, wounds, accidents, or congenital disorders Epilepsy or other seizure disorder Gastrointestinal disorders, for example, Crohn's Disease, irritable bowel syndrome Intellectual or developmental disability Mental health conditions, for example, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD Missing limbs or partially missing limbs Mobility impairment, benefiting from the use of a wheelchair, scooter, walker, leg brace(s) and/or other supports Nervous system condition, for example, migraine headaches, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis Neurodivergence, for example, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, dyspraxia, other learning disabilities Partial or complete paralysis (any cause) Pulmonary or respiratory conditions, for example, tuberculosis, asthma, emphysema Short stature (dwarfism) Traumatic brain injury Disability Status PUBLIC BURDEN STATEMENT: According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 no persons are required to respond to a collection of information unless such collection displays a valid OMB control number. This survey should take about 5 minutes to complete.
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As a staff software engineer for GenAI inference, you will lead the architecture, development, and optimization of the inference engine that powers Databricks Foundation Model API. You’ll bridge research advances and production demands, ensuring high throughput, low latency, and robust scaling. Your work will encompass the full GenAI inference stack: kernels, runtimes, orchestration, memory, and integration with frameworks and orchestration systems. What You Will Do
Own and drive the architecture, design, and implementation of the inference engine, and collaborate on model-serving stack optimized for large-scale LLMs inference Partner closely with researchers to bring new model architectures or features (sparsity, activation compression, mixture-of-experts) into the engine Lead the end-to-end optimization for latency, throughput, memory efficiency, and hardware utilization across GPUs, and accelerators Define and guide standards to build and maintain instrumentation, profiling, and tracing tooling to uncover bottlenecks and guide optimizations Architect scalable routing, batching, scheduling, memory management, and dynamic loading mechanisms for inference workloads Ensure reliability, reproducibility, and fault tolerance in the inference pipelines, including A/B launches, rollback, and model versioning Collaborate cross-functionally on integrating with federated, distributed inference infrastructure – orchestrate across nodes, balance load, handle communication overhead Drive cross-team collaboration: with platform engineers, cloud infrastructure, and security/compliance teams Represent the team externally through benchmarks, whitepapers, and open-source contributions What We Look For
BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, or a related field Strong software engineering background (6+ years or equivalent) in performance-critical systems Proven track record of owning complex system components and driving architectural decisions end-to-end Deep understanding of ML inference internals: attention, MLPs, recurrent modules, quantization, sparse operations, etc. Hands-on experience with CUDA, GPU programming, and key libraries (cuBLAS, cuDNN, NCCL, etc.) Strong background in distributed systems design, including RPC frameworks, queuing, RPC batching, sharding, memory partitioning Demonstrated ability to uncover and solve performance bottlenecks across layers (kernel, memory, networking, scheduler) Experience building instrumentation, tracing, and profiling tools for ML models Ability to lead through influence - work closely with ML researchers, translate novel model ideas into production systems Excellent communication and leadership skills, with a proactive and ownership-driven mindset Bonus: published research or open-source contributions in ML systems, inference optimization, or model serving 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 $190,900 — $232,800 USD 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, please visithttps://www.mybenefitsnow.com/databricks. 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. Apply for this job
* indicates a required field First Name * Last Name * Preferred First Name Email * Phone Country Phone Resume/CV Attach Enter manually Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf Cover Letter Attach Enter manually Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf LinkedIn Profile Website LinkedIn Profile Website How did you hear about this job? * Are you legally authorized to work in the country in which you are applying? * Do you now or will you in the future need sponsorship for employment visa status in the country in which you are applying? * Do you currently or have you previously worked for Databricks in the past? * Voluntary Self-Identification
For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file. As set forth in Databricks’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law. Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability
Form CC-305 Page 1 of 1 OMB Control Number 1250-0005 Expires 04/30/2026 Why are you being asked to complete this form? We are a federal contractor or subcontractor. The law requires us to provide equal employment opportunity to qualified people with disabilities. We have a goal of having at least 7% of our workers as people with disabilities. The law says we must measure our progress towards this goal. To do this, we must ask applicants and employees if they have a disability or have ever had one. People can become disabled, so we need to ask this question at least every five years. Completing this form is voluntary, and we hope that you will choose to do so. Your answer is confidential. No one who makes hiring decisions will see it. If you want to learn more about the law or this form, visit the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) website at www.dol.gov/ofccp. How do you know if you have a disability? A disability is a condition that substantially limits one or more of your “major life activities.” If you have or have ever had such a condition, you are a person with a disability. Disabilities include, but are not limited to: Alcohol or other substance use disorder (not currently using drugs illegally) Autoimmune disorder, for example, lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV/AIDS Blind or low vision Cancer (past or present) Cardiovascular or heart disease Celiac disease Cerebral palsy Deaf or serious difficulty hearing Diabetes Disfigurement, for example, disfigurement caused by burns, wounds, accidents, or congenital disorders Epilepsy or other seizure disorder Gastrointestinal disorders, for example, Crohn's Disease, irritable bowel syndrome Intellectual or developmental disability Mental health conditions, for example, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD Missing limbs or partially missing limbs Mobility impairment, benefiting from the use of a wheelchair, scooter, walker, leg brace(s) and/or other supports Nervous system condition, for example, migraine headaches, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis Neurodivergence, for example, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, dyspraxia, other learning disabilities Partial or complete paralysis (any cause) Pulmonary or respiratory conditions, for example, tuberculosis, asthma, emphysema Short stature (dwarfism) Traumatic brain injury Disability Status PUBLIC BURDEN STATEMENT: According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 no persons are required to respond to a collection of information unless such collection displays a valid OMB control number. This survey should take about 5 minutes to complete.
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