Strategic Solutions Architect - Cloud Data & AI

Databricks is the Data and AI company. Over 20,000 organizations worldwide—including 70% of the Fortune 500—rely on the Databricks Data + AI Platform (featuring Unity Catalog, Lakehouse, Lakeflow, Genie, and Agent Bricks) to build and scale data pipelines, analytics, AI apps, and autonomous agents.

As a Strategic Solutions Architect on the Digital Natives team, you will partner with the engineering and data science leadership of large global tech companies and high-growth AI-native enterprises. Reporting to the Field Engineering Manager, you will serve as a technical pre-sales leader—guiding sophisticated customer teams through Big Data architectures, proof-of-concept (PoC) implementations, competitive evaluations, and open-source integrations (Apache Spark™, Delta Lake, and MLflow).

Key Responsibilities

• Technical Pre-Sales & Account Leadership: Partner closely with Field Sales Account Executives to provide technical vision, demonstrating how Databricks solves complex business challenges for AI-native and tech-giant accounts.
• Architectural Consulting & Proofs of Concept: Design, build, and validate production-grade Big Data and AI architectures, spanning data engineering, machine learning pipelines, and SQL analytics workflows.
• Third-Party & Cloud Integrations: Validate and optimize integrations between Databricks, public cloud services (AWS, Azure, GCP), home-grown developer tools, and third-party software applications.
• Open-Source Advocacy: Serve as an expert and advocate for open-source ecosystems (Apache Spark™, Delta Lake, MLflow), cultivating technical champions and open-source contributors within customer teams.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with internal Solutions Architects, Product Managers, and Engineering teams to feed customer requirements and platform feedback directly into the Databricks roadmap.

Requirements

Practical Experience & Field Background

• 5+ years of professional experience in data engineering, data science, technical architecture, or pre-sales/solutions architecture roles.
• Proven experience architecting, building, and operating distributed data systems at scale.
• Available to travel regionally to visit enterprise customers as required by the business.

Technical Capabilities

• Comfortable writing and debugging production code in Python and SQL.
• Hands-on experience building solutions on public cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Deep expertise in at least one of the following technical domains:
  • Data Engineering: Apache Spark, Hadoop, Apache Kafka, or streaming infrastructure.
  • Data Science & ML: pandas, scikit-learn, PyTorch, TensorFlow, or LLM/MLOps frameworks.

Preferred Qualifications

• Degree in a quantitative discipline (e.g., Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, Operations Research, or Software Engineering).
• Official Databricks Certification (e.g., Databricks Certified Solutions Architect, Data Engineer, or ML Professional).

Total Rewards & Benefits

• Pay Transparency: Compensation range of $180,000 – $247,500 USD (Base Pay / OTE) + eligibility for performance bonus and long-term equity grants.
• Comprehensive Healthcare: Robust medical, dental, and vision insurance options for employees and eligible dependents.
• Financial Security & Time Off: 401(k) retirement savings program, generous time-off policies, flexible work arrangements, and parental leave benefits.