Sr. Director, Field Engineering (Lakebase)
Application analysis
Sr. Director, Field Engineering (Lakebase) at Databricks is a forward deployed data & ai platform role for engineers who want customer-facing technical work with real deployment ownership.
Reading this role
This Forward Deployed Engineer role centers on embedded customer delivery — discovery, prototyping, integration, and production rollout. Key signals from the listing: Senior scope.
About Databricks
Databricks sells a unified data platform to enterprises. Forward deployed engineers help customers migrate workloads and prove value on live data. The role is anchored in United States, so expect on-site customer work in that region.
Signals in the listing
Stand out for Sr. Director, Field Engineering (Lakebase)
- Lead your application with one paragraph tying Sr. Director, Field Engineering (Lakebase) to a specific customer or deployment you owned — Databricks hires for shipped outcomes, not tool lists.
- Prepare a 5-minute “week one on site” plan: who you would meet, what you would inspect in their stack, and what artifact you would deliver by day five.
- Show you can go from discovery notes → working integration → production checklist without needing a large internal team.
- This role is tied to United States — mention willingness to work on-site with customers and any existing ties to that market (clients, partners, or domain knowledge).
Stand out at Databricks
- Demonstrate Spark/SQL fluency with a concrete example — Databricks will probe for specifics, not buzzwords.
- Demonstrate enterprise stakeholder management with a concrete example — Databricks will probe for specifics, not buzzwords.
- Strong candidates show they can whiteboard a lakehouse migration and then actually implement the first milestone.
- Read recent engineering blog posts, product launches, and customer stories on databricks.com — reference one explicitly in your outreach to show genuine interest.
Tailored from this listing’s title, company, and description. Always verify requirements on the company careers page before applying.
Role description
We seek a seasoned technical leader for the Sr. Director of Field Engineering (Lakebase) position for North America. In this role, you will lead a leadership team managing technical field practitioners covering the end-to-end Databricks customer journey from Pre-Sales to Go-Live. Your teams will be accountable for driving the technical/business wins for the Databricks platform as well as accelerating the consumption of the Databricks platform, and driving workloads to production for all customers in your segment. Hiring, coaching, and motivating the team to success will be critical.
Req ID: FEQ327R205
The impact you will have:
You will report to the Americas Enterprise Field Engineering Leader and take full ownership and accountability for the global Lakebase Field Engineering organization scaling to over 50 SAs. Tight alignment with Global Lakebase Sales leader to define and operationalize Lakebase GTM strategy coupled with resource prioritization and distribution. Build a collaborative culture within a rapid-growth team. You will manage and mentor leaders and recruit talent focusing on inclusivity and resilience. Rapidly scale the Field Engineering Lakebase team while maintaining an exceptionally high bar for talent and hiring at pace. Drive a consistent, thorough management operating rhythm to review KPIs specific to a high-velocity database launch (developer adoption, production migration velocity, application launch timelines, and low-latency workload success). Serve as a thought leader, consulting with strategic customer and partner contacts to position the strength of Databricks, the comprehensive solutions strategy, and build trust and credibility in the account.