Engineering Manager, Foundation Model Inference (FMAPI)

Menlo Ventures; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 261,250; Full time

Job summary

Databricks, a leading data and AI company, seeks an Engineering Manager to lead the Foundation Model Inference team. You will guide infra engineers, drive multi-quarter initiatives, and collaborate with product leaders to deliver reliable, scalable AI capabilities.

The role emphasizes strong architectural judgment, team growth, and operational excellence in a fast-paced AI infrastructure environment.

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.
• Track record 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 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 infrastructure engineers for Foundation Model Inference and Foundation Model API.
• Shape roadmaps for real-time inference, provisioned throughput, and batch inference use cases.
• Partner with product and engineering leadership to deliver capabilities with reliability and service health.
• Maintain a deep understanding of the team's technical area and uphold high architectural and execution standards.

Skills

Leadership

Distributed systems

AI/ML infrastructure

Backend services

Product collaboration

Operational rigor

Communication & hiring

Education

BS in Computer Science or related field

Job description

Engineering Manager, Foundation Model Inference (FMAPI)

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—$261,250 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 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.