Sr. Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) - Public Sector/National Security
About this role
Building and productionizing solutions for federal government customers takes center stage in this customer-facing engineering role at Databricks. As a senior forward-deployed engineer focused on the public sector and national security, daily work involves owning system architecture, leading technical design decisions, and implementing end-to-end data and AI applications alongside client teams in Washington, D.C. Collaboration happens cross-functionally with product, engineering, and engagement managers to scope technical delivery work, bootstrap customer projects, and integrate client systems.
Operating at the intersection of complex technology and direct business impact, this position requires heavy client interaction, including traveling to customer locations twenty to twenty-five percent of the time. Professionals who excel here combine deep technical mastery in distributed computing and data architectures with exceptional customer empathy and stakeholder management. Success means guiding strategic federal clients through big data transformations, contributing reusable accelerators that scale across accounts, and ensuring secure, scalable deployments using the Databricks platform.
What you will do
- Lead impactful customer technical projects by delivering production-grade systems, custom applications, and data ingestion pipelines.
- Guide strategic federal customers through the end-to-end design, build, and deployment of big data and AI applications.
- Own architecture and design decisions to ensure solutions are secure, scalable, and aligned with company best practices.
- Collaborate with internal engineering and support teams to provide product feedback and resolve engagement-specific issues.
- Embed directly with customer teams, engaging with stakeholders ranging from technical individual contributors to executives.
- Contribute accelerators, frameworks, and best practices that scale impact across multiple client accounts.
What you need
- Possess six or more years of professional experience in software engineering, data engineering, or data platforms and analytics.
- Demonstrate fluency in writing code using Python, Scala, JavaScript or TypeScript, and modern frameworks.
- Bring working knowledge of at least two major cloud ecosystems alongside deep expertise in at least one.
- Show extensive hands-on experience with distributed computing using PySpark and Apache Spark runtime internals.
- Maintain practical experience implementing CI/CD workflows for production software deployments.
- Apply working knowledge of MLOps, machine learning models, and artificial intelligence APIs.
- Demonstrate strong technical project delivery, documentation, and white-boarding skills with enterprise clients.
Nice to have
- 10+ years experience in data transformation and warehousing within enterprise level, distributed data systems
- Expertise in MLOps, ML/AI models, and AI APIs
- Certification in a Databricks-specific domain
Skills and tech stack
Questions candidates ask
What is the remote and travel policy for this role?
This role is hybrid and has a requirement to travel to customer locations 20-25% of the time. The position is based in Washington, D.C.
What are the salary and compensation details?
The base salary range for this position is $182,000 to $250,208 USD. The total compensation package may also include eligibility for an annual performance bonus and equity.
Are there specific security clearance requirements for applicants?
Due to federal contract requirements and client site access obligations, U.S. citizenship and eligibility for a U.S. government secret clearance are required to access classified information. Candidates with an active Secret or higher clearance are strongly encouraged to apply.