Jobs / United States / Databricks
AI Engineer – Forward Deployed Engineering (AI FDE), U.S. Public Sector (Federal Focus)
Databricks · 🇺🇸 Maryland; Virginia; Washington, D.C.
Sponsorship verdict
Sponsorship possible
One solid signal, not two — worth applying, and worth asking about sponsorship early.
- Employer is on a government sponsor recordThe US Department of Labor certified 445 H-1B/E-3 labor condition applications for this employer between Oct 2025 and Jun 2026 (latest Jun 2026) — the step every H-1B hire needs first. USCIS also records 78 H-1B approvals in FY2023. Source: LCA disclosure data (US Department of Labor (OFLC)).
- The posting doesn’t mention sponsorshipSilence isn’t a refusal — ask the recruiter before investing much time.
- No salary bar for this routeH-1B has no fixed salary bar: the employer must pay at least the prevailing wage for the role and area. Cap-subject employers enter a lottery weighted by wage level. Source: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/12/29/2025-23853/weighted-selection-process-for-registrants-and-petitioners-seeking-to-file-cap-subject-h-1b, rules effective 2026-02-27.
- What Databricks paid sponsored hires in similar roles103 certified filings for “Software Engineer” (Software Developers) in CA: $158k–$191k, median $188k. Most were filed at wage level II (47%) — 2 lottery entries, ≈31% projected selection odds for cap-subject employers. Source: US Department of Labor LCA disclosure data (Oct 2025 – Jun 2026).
- Confirmed live todayWhen a source last listed this job as open.
US H-1B: cap-subject employers enter a lottery weighted by wage level — Level I gets 1 entry, Level IV gets 4 (DHS projected selection odds ≈15% at Level I to ≈61% at Level IV). Universities and non-profit research employers are cap-exempt. The $100,000 fee for new petitions from abroad is currently blocked by a court order (appeal pending).
A verdict summarises public evidence; it is not legal advice and never a guarantee — the employer and the immigration authority decide. Sign in to factor in where you can already work.
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Sponsor Radar — Databricks
The US Department of Labor certified 445 H-1B/E-3 labor condition applications for this employer between Oct 2025 and Jun 2026 (latest Jun 2026) — the step every H-1B hire needs first. USCIS also records 78 H-1B approvals in FY2023. Source: LCA disclosure data (US Department of Labor (OFLC)).
Past sponsorship or register membership never guarantees sponsorship for this vacancy or for you. Full Sponsor Radar for Databricks →
About the role
PLEASE NOTE : 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. The position is based in the Washington, D.C., Maryland, or Virginia metropolitan area and includes periodic on‑site work and client collaboration. Candidates with an active Secret or higher clearance are strongly encouraged to apply. 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. This role can be remote. 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) Pay Range Transparency Databricks is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. The pay range(s) for this role is listed below and represents the expected salary range for non-commissionable roles or on-target earnings for commissionable roles. Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to job-related skills, depth of experience, relevant certifications and training, and specific work location. Based on the factors above, Databricks anticipates utilizing the full width of the range. The total compensation package for this position may also include eligibility for annual performance bonus, equity, and the benefits listed above. For more information regarding which range your location is in visit our page here . Local Pay Range $182,000 — $250,208 USD About Databricks Databricks is the Data and AI company. More than 20,000 organiza