---
title: 'Sr. Designated Support Engineer, Apache Spark™ at Databricks'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/sr-designated-support-engineer-apache-spark-databricks-amsterdam-ex06561072n4'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-12'
---

# Sr. Designated Support Engineer, Apache Spark™ at Databricks

- **Company:** Databricks
- **Location:** Amsterdam, Netherlands
- **Posted:** 2025-08-19
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-12
- **Apply:** https://databricks.com/company/careers/open-positions/job?gh_jid=8125173002

## Job description

P-1448

## About the Role

Databricks is seeking an experienced Sr. Designated Support Engineer/Premier Support Engineer with a strong technical foundation in Apache Spark and a passion for customer engagement. This self-motivated professional will demonstrate high commitment to both customers and internal teams, with excellent communication, project management, and problem-solving skills. In this role, the Sr. Designated Support Engineer/Premier Support Engineer will build and maintain close relationships with strategic customers, manage and prioritize critical issues, and ensure a high-touch, proactive support experience.

The Impact You Will Have

- Manage large strategic accounts to provide a high-touch support experience.

- Deep-dive into complex Apache Spark and Data Engineering issues, analyzing Spark UI, thread dumps, and driver/executor logs to resolve critical performance bottlenecks.

- Advise strategic customers on Data Engineering best practices, including optimizing ETL/ELT pipelines, data modeling, and leveraging the Databricks Lakehouse architecture (Delta Lake/Iceberg).

- Project manage all open support cases to expedite support ticket closure.

- Facilitate customer correspondence with Engineering, Product Team, SMEs, and Accounts Teams to advance tickets toward resolution.

- Directly engage on business-impacting situations and ensure recovery of functionality for the customer.

- Successfully engage with Senior Leadership, Technical and Functional staff to remove roadblocks, address delays, and mitigate issues.

- Effectively use sound business judgment, risk avoidance, and SME resources to coordinate team efforts to solve problems.

- Carry out regular reviews of customer cases to identify trends and proactive optimization opportunities.

- Champion and advocate for customers and chair roundtables to ensure close communication and relationship building with key stakeholders.

- Drive customer self-sufficiency by ensuring customers understand how to engage with the Databricks Support organization and tools.

## What We Look For

- Minimum 3 years of dedicated experience in Data Engineering, building, deploying, and maintaining large-scale data pipelines.

- Minimum 3 years’ experience designing, developing, testing, and sustaining Python/Java/Scala-based applications required.

- Deep, architectural knowledge of Apache Spark internals (including Drivers, Executors, Core Memory Management, DAGs, Catalyst Optimizer, and Tungsten execution engine).

- Proven track record of troubleshooting complex Spark and big data issues, such as data skew, out-of-memory (OOM) errors, serialization issues, and slow-running broadcast joins.

- Highly effective with project managing multiple tasks and work streams, driving them to conclusion.

- Demonstrated analytical and problem-solving skills, particularly those that apply to a “Distributed Big Data Computing” environment.

- Excellent executive presence. You are an excellent communicator (written and verbal skills), with demonstrable customer communication and coordination efforts, and the ability to take complex technical ideas and translate them to non-technical stakeholders

- Preference for customer-facing experience as a Support Engineer, Technical Account Manager, DSE, or in related production support areas

## About Databricks

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 Bricks, Lakeflow, Lakehouse, and Unity Catalog. To learn more, follow Databricks on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/databricks), [X](https://x.com/databricks), [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@Databricks), and [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/databricksinc/?hl=en).

## Benefits

At Databricks, we strive to provide comprehensive benefits and perks that meet the needs of all of our employees. For specific details on the benefits offered in your region click [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/154un3e8Xav4BceOSlcYFZRGEuQI54xMxVydRwQn54eQ/edit?usp=sharing).

Our Commitment to Diversity and 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.

Compliance

If access to export-controlled technology or source code is required for performance of job duties, it is within Employer's discretion whether to apply for a U.S. government license for such positions, and Employer may decline to proceed with an applicant on this basis alone.

## About Databricks

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Databricks provides a unified data and AI platform built on an open lakehouse architecture, enabling organizations to manage data, analytics, and AI at scale.
- **Entity Type**: Private (late-stage, last reported valuation ~$43B in 2021, but current valuation not publicly disclosed)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2013
- **Founders**: Original creators of Apache Spark™, Delta Lake, MLflow, and Unity Catalog (co-founders include Ali Ghodsi, Matei Zaharia, Ion Stoica, Patrick Wendell, Reynold Xin, among others)

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Data & AI Platform / Enterprise Software
- Target customers: B2B – Enterprise, SMB, and government organizations; over 20,000 customers worldwide, including 70% of the Fortune 500
- Mission: “Simplify and democratize data and AI, helping data and AI teams solve the world’s toughest problems.” [databricks.com](https://www.databricks.com/company/about-us)

## Products & Services
- **Databricks Data Intelligence Platform**: Unified platform for data engineering, data warehousing, data science, machine learning, and AI. It integrates open-source technologies like Apache Spark, Delta Lake, MLflow, and Unity Catalog.
- **Lakebase**: Serverless Postgres database integrated with the lakehouse, built for the AI era.
- **Genie**: AI-powered natural language assistant for data insights and querying.
- **Agent Bricks**: Tools for building AI agents that continuously improve quality and accuracy on an organization’s data.
- **Additional offerings**: Data warehousing, business intelligence, governance, data engineering, and AI/ML services.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available (private company; last reported valuation of $43B in 2021 from a Series I round, but no recent official disclosure)
- **Key Metric**: Over 10,000 employees; 20,000+ customers; 70% of Fortune 500; 1,200+ global partners [databricks.com](https://www.databricks.com/)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not explicitly listed in search results, but known investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global, Microsoft, and others. Partners include major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) and consulting firms.
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount of 10,000+ employees; offices in 30+ locations across 20+ countries; 5x Leader in Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ Reports; LinkedIn job postings growing 26.7% year-over-year (783 active positions) [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/databricks)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Open lakehouse architecture**: Combines data lake and data warehouse capabilities with open-source standards, avoiding vendor lock-in.
- **Founding team behind Apache Spark, Delta Lake, MLflow**: Deep technical credibility and active open-source community.
- **Unified platform**: Single solution for data engineering, analytics, and AI, reducing complexity for enterprises.
- **Strong data governance**: Unity Catalog provides centralized access control and lineage.
- **AI-native**: Built-in AI capabilities (Genie, Agent Bricks) that leverage an organization’s own data.

## Strategic Focus
- Expanding AI capabilities with natural language interfaces and autonomous agents.
- Deepening integrations with cloud providers and open-source ecosystems.
- Scaling enterprise sales and global footprint (30+ offices, focus on EMEA and APAC).
- Cultivating a developer and data science community through university programs and open-source contributions.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Described as “innovators, builders and truthseekers” with a focus on solving hard technical problems. Emphasizes inclusion, diversity, and equity, including closing the pay gap and removing unconscious bias from recruitment. [databricks.com](https://www.databricks.com/company/careers)
- **Work Environment**: Hybrid/flexible work model; benefits and perks include health, well-being, and flexible ways of working. Offices in major cities globally.
- **Engineering Culture**: Strong emphasis on open-source, AI, and data infrastructure. Opportunities for interns and new grads to contribute to core platform. Hackathons, board game nights, and social events.
- **Growth**: Fast-growing company (10,000+ employees, 20,000+ customers) with ambitious scaling plans, offering career advancement in engineering, sales, product, and more.

## Sources
1. [Databricks About Us](https://www.databricks.com/company/about-us)
2. [Databricks Careers](https://www.databricks.com/company/careers)
3. [Databricks Homepage](https://www.databricks.com/)
4. [Databricks LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/databricks)

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