Tech Lead Manager - Lakebase

Cacheflow; Greater London; On-site; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Databricks is seeking a Tech Lead Manager to guide a small team of engineers while remaining deeply involved in architecture and code. You will drive design decisions, solve complex distributed systems problems, and coordinate with partner teams to align on dependencies across the Lakebase stack.

You will lead either Lakebase Platform Reliability, Lakebase Proxy, or Lakebase Storage, shaping a long-term roadmap and ensuring high engineering standards through reviews and rigorous testing.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of engineering experience, including time as a tech lead or senior engineer.
• Strong hands-on technical depth: design systems and write code, with architecture focus for large-scale distributed services.
• Experience with large-scale distributed services, testing, monitoring, and SLAs.

Responsibilities

• Lead a small team of engineers, owning execution and on-time delivery.
• Stay hands-on: drive architecture, design, and write code on core components.
• Set and uphold high technical standards through reviews, testing, and a culture of excellence.
• Grow the engineers on your team with clear feedback and development.
• Align with partner teams on dependencies and unblock cross-cutting projects.
• Partner with engineering and product leadership to shape and deliver a long-term roadmap.

Skills

Tech lead experience

Hands-on coding

Distributed systems

People management

Stakeholder alignment

Education

BS in Computer Science

Tools

Rust

PostgreSQL

Job description

P-1534

At Databricks, we are passionate about enabling data teams to solve the world's toughest problems — from making the next mode of transportation a reality to accelerating the development of medical breakthroughs. 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. Founded by engineers — and customer-obsessed — we leap at every opportunity to solve technical challenges, from designing next‑gen UI/UX for interfacing with data to scaling our services and infrastructure across millions of virtual machines. And we're only getting started.

Lakebase enables teams to deliver applications faster with an optimised database developer experience, integration with the lakehouse, and simplified operations. It provides a managed Postgres transactional layer for application state and workloads that combine operational data, analytics, and AI. You'll join as one of the founding leaders building out both the Lakebase product and our London presence.

This is a Tech Lead Manager role: a hands‑on technical leader who guides a small team of around five engineers while staying deep in the engineering work. You'll spend the majority of your time hands‑on — driving architecture and design, solving the hardest problems in your team's projects, aligning with partner teams on dependencies, and writing code — and the rest leading and growing the engineers around you, who will report directly to you. It's role for a strong senior engineer who wants to lead a team and take on people management without stepping away from the technical work.

The team you will lead (one of):

• Lakebase Platform Reliability (LPR) — Constantly evolve Lakebase reliability: cross‑functional infrastructure, observability, SLI/SLO definition and measurement, and higher operational efficiency without humans-in‑the‑loop, for both internal and customer‑facing systems, by building AI‑powered automation and services.
• Lakebase Proxy — Build the heart of the Lakebase data path, the network edge that every customer touches. The proxy handles all client connections and transfers every byte of query traffic, serving every data protocol: Postgres, HTTP, WebSockets, and the Data API. We route and manage large volumes of concurrent connections, solving load balancing, authentication, and data access at high throughput, with a focus on performance, observability, and reliability.
• Lakebase Storage — Drive continuous delivery within a team of experts in storage technology, distributed systems, and Rust. We manage the development and rollout of storage services that host millions of customer databases across dozens of regions, partnering with peer engineering teams across Databricks to co‑evolve Lakebase services with our global infrastructure, and leading operational excellence in the 24/7 operation of our system.

The impact you will have:

• Lead a small team of 5-6 engineers, owning execution and on‑time, high‑quality delivery.
• Stay hands‑on: drive architecture and design, and write code on the hardest parts of your team's projects.
• Set and uphold high technical standards through architecture reviews, testing, and a culture of engineering excellence.
• Grow the engineers on your team with clear feedback and career development.
• Align with partner teams on dependencies and unblock cross‑cutting projects across the Lakebase stack.
• Partner with engineering and product leadership to shape and deliver a long‑term roadmap.

What we look for:

• 5+ years of engineering experience, including time as a tech lead or senior engineer, driving projects end‑to‑end.
• Strong hands‑on technical depth: you still design systems and write code, and can go deep on architecture for large‑scale distributed services.
• Experience with large‑scale distributed services and the processes around testing, monitoring, and SLAs.
• People management, or at least tech lead experience, is a must — you're ready to take on direct reports and lead them.
• Ability to align multiple stakeholders on competing priorities.
• Able to balance short‑term delivery against long‑term stability.
• BS (or higher) in Computer Science, or a related field.

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.