About this role.
Databricks is seeking a customer-facing AI Forward Deployed Engineer to design, deploy, and scale production GenAI applications for client engagements. The role combines hands-on engineering in RAG, multi-agent systems, fine-tuning, LLMOps, cloud ML deployment, and large-scale data processing. The engineer will act as a trusted technical advisor, influence product direction through field insights, and communicate complex AI concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders. Candidates must be UK-based for remote work and should expect customer travel approximately once every four to eight weeks as needed.
Role DNA
A quick view of the complexity, pace, ownership and collaboration implied by the job description.
Job Complexity
5/5Pace & Pressure
5/5Autonomy Level
5/5Communication Load
5/5Salary analysis
Estimated compensation compared with the broader US market for similar roles.
Core skills
Skills and capabilities most closely associated with this opportunity.
Sample interview questions
I would explain the end-to-end architecture, including ingestion, chunking, embeddings, retrieval, reranking, prompt design, guardrails, and observability. I would describe using a representative evaluation set with measures such as groundedness, retrieval relevance, answer correctness, latency, and cost, then iterating based on user feedback and failure analysis.
I would begin with stakeholder discovery to identify business outcomes, users, available data, risk constraints, and success metrics. I would prioritize a feasible high-value use case, validate data readiness, build a short proof of value, and define a staged path from prototype to secure, observable production deployment.
Key considerations include data security and access controls, model and prompt versioning, evaluation gates, monitoring for quality and drift, latency and cost controls, human-review paths, and incident response. I would also ensure the system has clear fallback behavior, auditability, and governance appropriate to the customer's domain.
I focus on business impact rather than model mechanics, explaining that GenAI is probabilistic and can produce plausible but incorrect outputs. I outline the controls that reduce risk—grounding with trusted data, evaluations, guardrails, approval workflows, and monitoring—and connect each control to the intended business outcome.
I would profile the workflow to identify whether retrieval, model inference, excessive context, or repeated calls are the main drivers. Typical improvements include caching, reducing and reranking context, using smaller models for routing or simpler tasks, batching where appropriate, and setting quality thresholds so expensive model calls are reserved for cases that need them.
AI Engineer – FDE (Forward Deployed Engineer)
Req ID: CSQ427R191
Location: United Kingdom – Remote (must be based in the UK for this role)
Mission
The AI Forward Deployed Engineering (AI FDE) team is a highly specialized customer-facing AI team at Databricks. We deliver professional services engagements to help our customers build and productionize first-of-its-kind AI applications. We work cross-functionally to shape long-term strategic priorities and initiatives alongside engineering, product, and developer relations, as well as support internal subject matter expert (SME) teams. We view our team as an ensemble: we look for individuals with strong, unique specializations to improve the overall strength of the team. This team is the right fit for you if you love working with customers, teammates, and fueling your curiosity for the latest trends in GenAI, LLMOps, and ML more broadly.
We welcome remote applicants located near our offices. Preferred locations: London (UK),
Reporting to: Senior Manager – AI FDE, EMEA
The impact you will have:
- Develop cutting-edge GenAI solutions, incorporating the latest techniques from Databricks AI research to solve customer problems
- Own production rollouts of consumer and internally facing GenAI applications
- Serve as a trusted technical advisor to customers across a variety of domains
- Present at conferences such as Data + AI Summit, recognized as a thought leader internally and externally
- Collaborate cross-functionally with the product and engineering teams to influence priorities and shape the product roadmap
What we look for:
- Experience building GenAI applications, including RAG, multi-agent systems, Text2SQL, fine-tuning, etc., with tools such as HuggingFace, LangChain, and DSPy
- Expertise in deploying production-grade GenAI applications, including evaluation and optimizations
- Extensive years of hands-on industry data science experience, leveraging common machine learning and data science tools, i.e. pandas, scikit-learn, PyTorch, etc.
- Experience building production-grade machine learning deployments on AWS, Azure, or GCP
- Graduate degree in a quantitative discipline (Computer Science, Engineering, Statistics, Operations Research, etc.) or equivalent practical experience
- Experience communicating and/or teaching technical concepts to non-technical and technical audiences alike
- Passion for collaboration, life-long learning, and driving business value through AI
- [Preferred] Experience using the Databricks Intelligence Platform and Apache Spark™ to process large-scale distributed datasets
- Willing to travel once every 4-8 weeks to see customers (as needed)
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, X, YouTube, and Instagram.
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.
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.
Annual salary information is not provided for this position. Explore salary ranges for similar roles in our Salary Directory ›
Upload your resume now
- To unlock remote work opportunities and be discovered by global employers.
This job listing has been manually reviewed by the Jobicy Trust & Safety Team for compliance with our posting guidelines, including verification of the company's legitimacy, accuracy of job details, clarity of remote work policy, and absence of misleading or fraudulent content.
