Software Engineer - Performance PhD Candidates Mountain View, California

Company: Databricks Inc.
Location: Mountain View
Posted on: June 1, 2025

Job Description:

At Databricks, we are passionate about helping data teams solve the world's toughest problems. We do this by building and running the world's best data and AI infrastructure platform so our customers can use deep data insights to improve their business. Databricks develops and operates 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 observe cloud hardware, network, and operating system faults, and our software must gracefully shield our customers from any of the above.As a performance engineer, you will work with multiple teams across the company to evaluate the performance of products and features, identify performance bottlenecks, and partner with engineers to solve performance and scalability issues. This implies, among other teams, setting performance targets for software releases, guiding teams to develop performance benchmarks, running competitive benchmark analysis for different Databricks products, doing deep dive analysis to identify performance issues and fix them. You will report directly to the Director of Engineering and have the opportunity to work with a strong team of engineers.The impact you will have:

• You will identify performance limitations of the entire stack based on telemetry, customer signals, POCs, and benchmarks to result in the best performing system across the industry, when resolved. Impact spans all cloud providers and all major areas.
• You will set the performance expectations for all cross-cutting efforts early on through specialized benchmarks capturing the intended customer user journeys, and make sure they are met before deployed to customers.
• You will understand the performance characteristics of the compute instance types, storage layers, and all cloud services Databricks depends on and deploy solutions to meet the customer demand.
• You will work with customers to root cause and reduce performance problems during production, previews, and POCs.What We Look For:
  • PhD in databases or systems
  • Knowledge of database systems, storage systems, distributed systems, and performance optimization
  • Motivated by delivering customer value and influencePay Range Transparency:Local Pay Range: $150,000 - $190,000 USDAbout Databricks:Databricks is the data and AI company. More than 10,000 organizations worldwide - including Comcast, Cond-- 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.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 visit .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.
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Keywords: Databricks Inc., Santa Clara , Software Engineer - Performance PhD Candidates Mountain View, California, IT / Software / Systems , Mountain View, California