Senior Software Engineer, AI Runtime

<p>P-1428</p> <p>At Databricks, we run the world's largest AI platform. We believe the next breakthroughs will come from models trained on domain-specific enterprise data, not from bigger general-purpose models alone.</p> <p>That's why we built <a href="https://www.databricks.com/product/ai-runtime">AI Runtime</a>, a serverless product that makes GPU training of any size feel simple, so companies can train their own models the way frontier labs do. Customers across industries train on it, right next to the enterprise data already in Databricks. Among them are Rivian in automotive, Robinhood in fintech, and Merck, which builds foundation models for drug discovery. Our own AI researchers use it to post-train models with hundreds of billions to nearly a trillion parameters.</p> <p>It takes a lot of engineering to make that work, and we've written about it on our blog: how we <a href="https://www.databricks.com/blog/how-we-keep-gpus-reliable-across-databricks-ai">keep GPUs reliable</a>, <a href="https://www.databricks.com/blog/fast-fault-tolerant-pytorch-training-ai-runtime">make training fault-tolerant</a>, and <a href="https://www.databricks.com/blog/reducing-qwen-training-time-6x-ai-runtime">speed up fine-tuning</a> with fused kernels and smart sequence packing. AI agents now launch experiments too, and on our research team they've already <a href="https://www.databricks.com/blog/how-our-ai-research-team-uses-ai-runtime">increased training jobs 8x</a>.</p> <p>As a Senior Software Engineer, you'll work on the systems behind all of this, solving hard technical problems and helping shape how AI Runtime evolves.</p> <p><strong>The impact you will have:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Build core parts of AI Runtime and contribute to Databricks' technical direction in AI training infrastructure.</li> <li>Develop reliability and observability features for a fleet that keeps growing in scale and complexity.</li> <li>Improve AI Runtime's developer experience for people and agents, so even the largest training jobs feel as simple as a first experiment.</li> <li>Help prepare AI Runtime for new GPU generations and workload types.</li> <li>Take on hard multi-node training problems, from orchestration and GPU scheduling to data loading and checkpointing.</li> <li>Make training faster and cheaper by raising efficiency across model architectures and GPU accelerators.</li> <li>Work with research, product, and customers on what we build next and own features from design through production.</li> <li>Champion engineering excellence, raise the bar, and help the engineers around you grow.</li> </ul> <p><strong>What we look for:</strong></p> <ul> <li>5+ years in large-scale distributed systems, with experience in GPU training, high-performance computing, or ML systems.</li> <li>Experience training large models with FSDP, DeepSpeed, or Megatron, and familiarity with parallelism strategies.</li> <li>Working knowledge of GPU performance, including accelerator architecture, high-speed interconnects, and kernels.</li> <li>Strong understanding of training resilience patterns, such as checkpointing, failure detection, and automatic recovery.</li> <li>A background in building and running multi-tenant cloud platforms as products.</li> <li>A track record of owning complex features end to end and seeing them through to customer impact.</li> <li>The clarity to explain technical designs in writing and in person, and a reputation as a teammate others learn from.</li> <li>BS in Computer Science or a related field (MS or PhD preferred).</li> </ul><div class="content-pay-transparency"><div class="pay-input"><div class="description"><p> </p> <p><strong>Pay Range Transparency</strong></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400; font-size: 14px;">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 <a href="https://www.databricks.com/sites/default/files/2024-08/us-pay-zone-mapping.pdf">here</a>.<br></span></p> <p> </p></div><div class="title">Local Pay Range</div><div class="pay-range"><span>$160,000</span><span class="divider">—</span><span>$225,000 USD</span></div></div></div><div class="content-conclusion"><p><strong>About Databricks</strong></p> <p><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">Databricks is the Data and AI company. More than 20,000 organizations worldwide — including adidas, AT&T, Bayer, Block, Mastercard, Rivian, Unilever, and 70% of the Fortune 500 — rely on the Databricks Data + AI Platform to build and scale data and AI apps, analytics and agents. Headquartered in San Francisco with 30+ offices around the globe, Databricks offers a unified platform that includes Genie, Lakebase, Agent