Senior Data & AI Solutions Engineer - Forward-Deployed

Neon; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 150,125 - 250,208; Full time

Job summary

Menlo Ventures presents an exciting opportunity for a Forward Deployed Engineer at Databricks in the Chicago area. You will own architecture, lead design decisions, and implement end-to-end data, AI, and application solutions on the Databricks platform.

This hands-on, customer-facing role requires delivering production-grade systems while maintaining strong customer empathy. The role emphasizes architecture leadership, collaboration with engineering and product teams, and the ability to

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience in data engineering, data platforms & analytics, or software engineering.
• Proficiency in Python, Scala, or JavaScript/TypeScript.
• Experience with two or more cloud ecosystems (AWS, Azure, GCP) and Spark expertise.
• Understanding of distributed computing with Apache Spark and Spark internals.
• Familiarity with CI/CD for production deployments.
• Experience with MLOps, ML/AI models and AI APIs.
• Ability to design and deploy production end-to-end data architectures and apps.
• Strong technical project delivery skills and stakeholder management.
• Databricks Certification is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Lead production-grade customer projects delivering reference architectures and data pipelines.
• Design and implement end-to-end systems integrating data, ML/AI models, and applications.
• Guide customers on architecture, security, scalability, and best practices.
• Collaborate with engineering, product, and customer teams to ensure delivery success.
• Embed with customer teams to understand challenges and drive impact.
• Contribute accelerators and best practices to scale across accounts.

Skills

Data engineering

Apache Spark

Python

Scala

JavaScript/TypeScript

CI/CD

MLOps

System architecture

Databricks

Tools

Databricks

Job description

Menlo Ventures presents an exciting opportunity for a Forward Deployed Engineer at Databricks in the Chicago area. You will own architecture, lead design decisions, and implement end-to-end data, AI, and application solutions on the Databricks platform.

This hands-on, customer-facing role requires delivering production-grade systems while maintaining strong customer empathy. The role emphasizes architecture leadership, collaboration with engineering and product teams, and the ability to