Sr. Staff Technical Program Manager - Reliability

Databricks; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 191,400 - 252,720; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive benefits

Diversity and inclusion commitment

Job summary

A leading data and AI company is looking for a Senior Staff Technical Program Manager - Reliability to lead key initiatives across engineering teams. This role requires managing large-scale programs, defining strategic roadmaps, and driving the adoption of reliability best practices. The ideal candidate has over 10 years of relevant experience, particularly in cloud infrastructure and distributed systems. This position is based in San Francisco, offering a competitive salary range of $191,400 – $252,720 USD.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience managing large-scale technical programs in cloud infrastructure or distributed systems.
• Experience with multiple cloud providers (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Ability to translate ambiguous goals into actionable plans with KPIs.

Responsibilities

• Lead the strategy and execution of Reliability initiatives across teams.
• Partner with senior leadership to define long-term Reliability roadmap.
• Drive adoption of reliability best practices across engineering.

Skills

Management of large-scale technical programs

Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure

Experience with distributed systems

Risk management

Technical leadership

Cross-organizational collaboration

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Jira

Job description

Sr. Staff Technical Program Manager - Reliability

Join to apply for the Sr. Staff Technical Program Manager - Reliability role at Databricks.

At Databricks, we empower data teams to tackle the world’s most complex challenges by building and operating the best data and AI infrastructure platform, enabling customers to leverage deep insights and enhance their businesses.

Responsibilities

Lead the strategy, execution, and continuous improvement of key Reliability initiatives across infrastructure and product engineering teams.

• Partner with senior engineering leadership to define the long‑term Reliability roadmap, influence technical direction, and ensure alignment across teams.
• Ensure clarity and alignment on priorities across engineering teams, including Platform Engineering, Compute Fleet Management, SRE, Security, and Cloud Partnerships.
• Own program execution end‑to‑end: planning, risk management, dependency mapping, trade‑off decisions, status reporting, and delivery.
• Identify gaps in process or architecture and work with team leads to proactively drive organizational or technical improvements.
• Using your background in infrastructure, distributed systems, or SRE to help teams make sound design and prioritization decisions.
• Facilitate alignment between cross‑functional teams to ensure programs are technically grounded and execution‑ready.
• Bring systems thinking to diagnose reliability bottlenecks and drive improvements to scalability, fault tolerance, automation, and operational tooling.
• Drive adoption of reliability best practices across engineering teams – including error budgets, incident reviews, design‑for‑resilience patterns, and operational readiness.
• Define and implement program governance, repeatable processes, metrics, and documentation to scale reliability efforts across teams.
• Evangelize reliability expectations and engineer‑empowering processes that reduce operational load and improve incident preparedness.

Required Experience & Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience managing and delivering large‑scale technical programs in cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, SRE, or platform engineering environments.
• Experience developing infrastructure at two or more hyperscale cloud providers (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP), with knowledge of cloud primitives, multi‑AZ/region architecture, and control plane/data plane patterns.
• Demonstrated success leading Reliability programs at scale – including availability, failover, operational excellence, incident reduction, or dependency hardening.
• Strong understanding of infrastructure, distributed systems, or SRE practices; previous engineering or SRE experience highly preferred.
• Experience partnering directly with senior engineering leadership to define strategy and drive large, multi‑team initiatives.
• Ability to translate ambiguous goals into actionable program plans with clear milestones, KPIs, and success metrics.
• Demonstrated ability to manage complex cross‑organizational dependencies, technical risks, and multi‑quarter timelines.
• Experience delivering programs across multiple clouds and/or large‑scale cloud‑native services.
• Experience building and scaling engineering processes, operational frameworks, and stakeholder alignment mechanisms.

Preferred Qualifications

• Background in distributed systems engineering, SRE, platform infrastructure, or cloud services.
• Experience with large‑scale compute fleets, container orchestration, autoscaling, or control‑plane architecture.
• Familiarity with reliability methodologies such as SLOs, error budgets, chaos engineering, failure mode analysis, and incident management frameworks.
• Expertise using Jira or equivalent tools for program tracking and execution.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field; advanced degree preferred.

Pay Range Transparency

Local Pay Range: $191,400 – $252,720 USD. The pay range 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.

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.

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, please visit https://www.mybenefitsnow.com/databricks.

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.