Senior Forward Deployed Engineer – Data & AI (Secret/TS)

FDE Times; Virginia; Hybrid; USD 182,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Databricks seeks a Sr. Forward Deployed Engineer to partner with federal government customers, owning architecture and end-to-end delivery of data and AI solutions on the Databricks platform.

This hands-on, customer-facing role emphasizes measurable outcomes and strong collaboration across engineering, product, and customer teams. The position is hybrid with 20–25% travel to client locations and requires deep experience in data engineering, Spark, and MLOps to deliver secure, scalable solutions

Qualifications

• 6+ years experience in data engineering, data platforms & analytics, or software engineering.
• Fluency in writing code in Python, Scala, JavaScript/TypeScript, and modern frameworks.
• Working knowledge of two or more cloud ecosystems (AWS, Azure, GCP) with expertise in at least one.
• Deep experience with distributed computing with Apache Spark and knowledge of Spark runtime internals.
• Familiarity with CI/CD for production deployments; Working knowledge of MLOps, ML/AI models and APIs.
• Design and deployment of performant production end-to-end data architectures and applications that combine data pipelines, ML/AI models, and user-facing interfaces.
• Experience with technical project delivery, documentation and white-boarding skills.
• Experience working with enterprise clients and managing conflicts across a broad stakeholder range.
• Preferred: Databricks Certification

Responsibilities

• Lead production-grade customer technical projects including design of reference architectures and data ingestion.
• Oversee end-to-end design, build and deployment of big data and AI applications with customer input.
• Guide customers on architecture and design to ensure secure, scalable solutions.
• Own architecture decisions to align with customer needs and Databricks best practices.
• Coordinate with technical teams to deliver all engagement components on schedule.
• Collaborate with engineers and support to provide product and implementation feedback.
• Embed with customer teams to understand challenges and deliver impact.
• Contribute accelerators, frameworks, and best practices to scale impact across accounts.

Skills

Python

Scala

JavaScript/TypeScript

Modern frameworks

AWS

Azure

GCP

Apache Spark

CI/CD

MLOps

Data architectures

Enterprise clients

Tools

Databricks Certification

Job description

Databricks seeks a Sr. Forward Deployed Engineer to partner with federal government customers, owning architecture and end-to-end delivery of data and AI solutions on the Databricks platform.

This hands-on, customer-facing role emphasizes measurable outcomes and strong collaboration across engineering, product, and customer teams. The position is hybrid with 20–25% travel to client locations and requires deep experience in data engineering, Spark, and MLOps to deliver secure, scalable solutions