Engineering Manager, Foundation Model Inference (FMAPI)

Databricks; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 261,000; Full time

Job summary

Databricks in Mountain View, California, is seeking an Engineering Manager for the Foundation Model Inference (FMAPI) organization. You will lead a team delivering scalable inference infrastructure for real-time and batch workloads, collaborating with product and engineering to ensure reliability and high performance.

This role requires strong leadership, deep expertise in distributed systems and AI infrastructure, and a proven track record delivering multi-quarter initiatives in a fast-moving

Qualifications

• Experience managing and growing high-performing software engineering teams.
• Strong technical judgment in distributed systems, platform infrastructure, AI/ML infrastructure, or large-scale backend services.
• A track record of delivering complex, multi-quarter engineering initiatives with high quality and predictable execution.
• Experience partnering effectively with product management and peer engineering teams to translate customer and business needs into roadmaps and shipped outcomes.
• Operational rigor, including experience with service health, incident response, postmortems, and continuous improvement.
• Excellent communication, coaching, and hiring skills.
• BS in Computer Science or related field.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow a team of talented, product-minded infrastructure Engineers working on Foundation Model Inference and API; own the systems powering large-scale inference workloads for customers.
• Shape roadmap for real-time inference, provisioned throughput, and batch inference use cases.
• Partner closely with product and engineering leadership to deliver capabilities with reliability, quality, and service health.
• Build an inclusive, high-performing team that attracts, develops, and retains exceptional engineers.
• Maintain deep understanding of your team’s technical area and uphold a strong bar for architecture and operational excellence.

Skills

Team Leadership

Distributed Systems

AI/ML Infrastructure

Backend Services

Hiring & Coaching

Product Partnership

Communication

Education

BS in Computer Science

Job description

Engineering Manager, Foundation Model Inference (FMAPI)

Mountain View, California

Engineering Manager, Foundation Model Inference (FMAPI)

RDQ427R519

At Databricks, we are driven by a passion to empower data teams in tackling the world's most challenging problems — from revolutionizing transportation to accelerating medical innovations. Our mission is to build and operate the premier data and AI infrastructure platform, enabling our customers to leverage deep data insights for transformative business improvements. If you are passionate about advancing data and AI technologies and are eager to lead a cutting-edge product to success, we invite you to join our dynamic team at Databricks.

The Foundation Model Inference team is the backbone of Databricks’ generative AI capabilities. We build the infrastructure that enables our customers to serve, scale, and optimize frontier models with enterprise-grade reliability and performance. Our Foundation Model APIs provide a unified platform that gives customers access to LLMs with the governance, flexibility, and scalability required for enterprise production workloads.

Databricks is looking for an Engineering leader to lead part of our Foundation Model Inference organization. We are seeking a leader who can build strong teams, uphold a high technical bar, and drive execution on large multi-quarter initiatives in a fast-moving AI infrastructure environment.

The impact you will have

• Lead and grow a team of talented, product-minded infrastructure Engineers working on Databricks Foundation Model Inference and Foundation Model API; The teams owns the systems powering large-scale inference workloads for customers through partner models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini) and self-hosted models (Qwen, GPT-OSS, Llama).
• Help shape the roadmap for products spanning real-time inference, provisioned throughput, and batch inference use cases.
• Partner closely with product and engineering leadership to deliver the right capabilities with strong reliability, quality, and service health.
• Build an inclusive, high-performing team that attracts, develops, and retains exceptional engineers.
• Maintain a deep understanding of your team’s technical area and uphold a strong bar for architecture, implementation quality, and operational excellence.

What we look for

• Experience managing and growing high-performing software engineering teams.
• Strong technical judgment in distributed systems, platform infrastructure, AI/ML infrastructure, or large-scale backend services, with the ability to maintain quality even in areas you have not worked on personally.
• A track record of delivering complex, multi-quarter engineering initiatives with high quality and predictable execution.
• Experience partnering effectively with product management and peer engineering teams to translate customer and business needs into roadmaps and shipped outcomes.
• Operational rigor, including experience with service health, incident response, postmortems, and continuous improvement.
• Excellent communication, coaching, and hiring skills.
• BS in Computer Science or related field.

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 .

Zone 1 Pay Range

$190,000 — $261