Sr. Staff Technical Program Manager - Reliability

Sr. Staff Technical Program Manager - Reliability Location: Seattle | Employment: Full-time | Compensation: Negotiable. At Databricks, we are passionate about empowering data teams to tackle the world's most complex challenges—from bringing the next mode of transportation to reality to accelerating the development of medical breakthroughs. We achieve this by building and operating the world's best data and AI infrastructure platform, enabling our customers to leverage deep data insights and enhance their business. The Role As a high‑visibility, high‑impact leader, you will partner with senior engineering executives, Reliability program sponsors, and engineering managers to define strategy, set long‑term goals, and execute multi‑quarter programs that build the most reliable cloud platform on the planet. Key Responsibilities Lead Reliability Strategy + Multi‑Quarter Roadmaps Partner with senior engineering leadership to define the long‑term reliability roadmap, influence technical direction, and ensure alignment across teams. Ensure clarity and alignment on priorities across engineering teams including Platform Engineering, Compute Fleet Management, SRE, Security, and Cloud Partnerships. Drive Execution of Critical Reliability Programs Own program execution end‑to‑end: planning, risk management, dependency mapping, trade‑off decisions, status reporting, and delivery.Identify gaps in process or architecture and work with team leaders to proactively drive organizational or technical improvements. Partner Deeply with Engineering & Influence Technical Direction Use your background in infrastructure, distributed systems, or SRE to help teams make sound design and prioritization decisions. Facilitate alignment between cross‑functional teams to ensure programs are technically grounded and execution‑ready. Apply systems thinking to diagnose reliability bottlenecks and drive improvements to scalability, fault tolerance, automation, and operational tooling. Elevate Reliability Culture Across the Organization Drive adoption of reliability best practices across engineering teams—error budgets, incident reviews, design‑for‑resilience patterns, and operational readiness. Define and implement program governance, repeatable processes, metrics, and documentation to scale reliability efforts across teams. Evangelize reliability expectations and engineer‑empowering processes that reduce operational load and improve incident preparedness. Qualifications Required Experience & Qualifications 10+ years of experience managing and delivering large‑scale technical programs in cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, SRE, or platform engineering environments. Experience developing infrastructure at two or more hyperscale cloud providers (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP), with knowledge of cloud primitives, multi‑AZ/region architecture, and control‑plane/data‑plane patterns. Demonstrated success leading reliability programs at scale—including availability, failover, operational excellence, incident reduction, or dependency hardening. Strong understanding of infrastructure, distributed systems, or SRE practices; prior engineering or SRE experience highly preferred. Experience partnering directly with senior engineering leadership to define strategy and drive large, multi‑team initiatives. Ability to translate ambiguous goals into actionable program plans with clear milestones, KPIs, and success metrics. Demonstrated ability to manage complex cross‑organizational dependencies, technical risks, and multi‑quarter timelines. Experience delivering programs across multiple clouds and/or large‑scale cloud‑native services. Experience building and scaling engineering processes, operational frameworks, and stakeholder alignment mechanisms. Preferred Qualifications Background in distributed systems engineering, SRE, platform infrastructure, or cloud services. Experience with large‑scale compute fleets, container orchestration, autoscaling, or control‑plane architecture. Familiarity with reliability methodologies such as SLOs, error budgets, chaos engineering, failure‑mode analysis, and incident‑management frameworks. Expertise using Jira or equivalent tools for program tracking and execution. Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field; advanced degree preferred. Compensation Pay Range Transparency: The pay range for this role is $180,200—$243,340 USD, with potential eligibility for annual performance bonus, equity, and benefits. Benefits Databricks offers comprehensive benefits and perks that meet the needs of all employees. For specific details on the benefits offered in your region, please visit Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion At Databricks, we are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive culture where everyone can excel. Our hiring practices are inclusive and meet equal employment opportunity standards. We consider applicants without regard to age, color, disability, ethnicity, family or marital status, gender identity or expression, language, national origin, physical or 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. #J-18808-Ljbffr