Staff Software Engineer, Technical Lead, Lakebase Manager (LBM) Bellevue, Washington

Databricks Inc.; Bellevue (WA); On-site; USD 182,400 - 247,000; Full time

Job summary

Databricks is seeking a Technical Lead for the Lakebase Manager team to drive the central control plane and the core logic for Lakebase: database lifecycle, wake/suspend, and high availability. This hands-on IC role partners with the engineering manager and spans Go, Rust, PostgreSQL, and Kubernetes.

You will set technical direction, mentor engineers, and shape the long-term roadmap while ensuring reliability and scalable design across storage, compute, proxy and console components.

Qualifications

• 8+ years designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems.
• Proven track record of technical leadership as an individual contributor.
• Hands-on design and production code: deep architectural expertise.
• Experience with reliability-centric services, on-call and incident response.
• Ability to align stakeholders and balance long-term stability with delivery.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical direction for LBM and own reliability of team output.
• Drive architecture, write code for the hardest parts of projects.
• Uphold high standards via reviews, testing, and engineering excellence.
• Mentor engineers and grow distributed-systems and design skills.
• Define SLIs/SLOs and drive long-term reliability improvements.
• Lead cross-team initiatives across the Lakebase stack.
• Partner with leadership to shape the long-term technical roadmap.

Skills

Distributed systems design

Technical leadership

Go or Rust

PostgreSQL

Kubernetes

Architecture & design

On-call / incident response

Education

BS in Computer Science

Tools

Go

Rust

PostgreSQL

Kubernetes

Job description

Overview

At Databricks, we are passionate about enabling data teams to solve the world's toughest problems, from making the next mode of transportation a reality to accelerating the development of medical breakthroughs. We do this by building and running the world's best data and AI infrastructure platform so our customers can use deep data insights to improve their business. Founded by engineers and customer obsessed, we leap at every opportunity to solve technical challenges, from designing next‑gen UI/UX for interfacing with data to scaling our services and infrastructure across millions of virtual machines. And we're only getting started.

Lakebase enables teams to deliver applications faster with an optimized database developer experience, integration with the lakehouse, and simplified operations. It provides a managed Postgres transactional layer for application state and workloads that combine operational data, analytics, and AI. You'll join as one of the key engineers building out the Lakebase product.

Role

As the Technical Lead on the Lakebase Manager (LBM) team, you will drive, build, and operate the central control plane that owns the core logic for Lakebase: database creation and deletion, wake‑up and suspend, maintaining computes on hot standby, HA failover, and more. LBM interacts with every Lakebase component (storage, compute, proxy, and console) and manages the full database lifecycle at scale, with a focus on reliability. This is a hands‑on individual‑contributor role: you lead the team technically and partner with the team's engineering manager, who owns people management and delivery planning. The stack is Go, Rust, PostgreSQL, and Kubernetes.

Impact & Responsibilities

• Set the technical direction for LBM and own the quality and reliability of what the team ships, driving execution on the hardest, highest‑risk parts.
• Drive architecture and design, and write code on the hardest parts of your team's projects.
• Set and uphold high technical standards through architecture reviews, testing, and a culture of engineering excellence.
• Raise the technical bar of the team: mentor engineers, drive rigorous design and code review, and grow their distributed‑systems and design skills.
• Define SLIs, meet SLOs, and drive long‑term reliability improvements across the database lifecycle.
• Lead cross‑team initiatives across the Lakebase stack: align with partner teams on dependencies and unblock cross‑cutting projects.
• Partner with engineering and product leadership to shape and deliver a long‑term technical roadmap.

Qualifications

• 8+ years designing, building, and operating large‑scale distributed systems, including the processes around testing, monitoring, and SLIs/SLOs.
• A track record of technical leadership as an individual contributor: setting architecture and direction for a team's projects through influence, without formal management authority.
• Strong hands‑on depth: you still design systems and write production code, and can go deep on architecture for large‑scale distributed services.
• Experience operating reliability‑critical, highly available services (on‑call, incident response, HA/failover).
• Comfortable working toward a multi‑year vision with incremental deliverables, and balancing short‑term delivery against long‑term stability.
• Ability to align multiple stakeholders on competing priorities.
• Motivated by delivering customer value and impact.
• Proficiency in Go, Rust, or a similar systems language; experience with PostgreSQL and Kubernetes is a plus.
• BS (or higher) in Computer Science, or a related field.

Pay Range

Local Pay Range: $182,400 – $247,000 USD

Benefits

At Databricks, we strive to provide comprehensive benefits and perks that meet the needs of all of our employees.

Diversity & 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.

EEO Statement

As set forth in Databricks’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.