Manager, Developer Relations - Open Source

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At Databricks, we are passionate about enabling data teams to solve the world's most challenging problems — from making the next mode of transportation a reality to accelerating medical breakthroughs. We do this by building and running the world's best data and AI platform, enabling our customers to use deep data insights to improve their businesses. Our ability to execute this mission depends on building trust and recognition within an ever-growing community of data engineers, analysts, scientists, machine learning practitioners, and AI practitioners.

Databricks’ Developer Relations team is looking for a leader to manage our open source Developer Advocates, deepen our engagement across the Apache Software Foundation and Linux Foundation communities, and lead technical storytelling and experiences that strengthen trust and adoption. This role is ideal for someone who thrives in the spotlight, is known and respected in open source communities, and gets even more satisfaction from growing other advocates than from giving the keynote themselves.

As the Developer Advocate Manager for Open Source, you'll lead the team that advocates for the projects Databricks builds in the open, and serve as a crucial link between our engineering teams and the global community of practitioners building their careers on them. Your team's remit spans the Open Lakehouse — Apache Spark™ (including Spark Declarative Pipelines), Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Apache Iceberg™, and MLflow — as well as Omnigent, our open source meta-harness for composing, governing, and sharing AI agents. As the original creators of Apache Spark™, Delta Lake, and MLflow, we hold ourselves to a high standard here: our credibility in these communities is earned continuously, not inherited.

This role will leverage your expertise in building and scaling a developer relations team, and it will build on your standing within the open source world and your working relationships with the Apache Software Foundation, the Linux Foundation, and the maintainers and committers who keep these projects healthy. You'll coach your team on building a content flywheel — where a single demo, video, or talk becomes the source of truth for a dozen derivative assets — and on applying AI as a force multiplier without ever lowering the technical bar.

Your responsibilities will encompass both team leadership and a wide range of knowledge-sharing activities. You'll lead by example: delivering engaging talks, hosting panels and meetups, creating blogs and video content, developing courseware, answering questions in community forums, and meeting one-on-one with influential contributors and maintainers.

Community engagement will be at the heart of your role. You'll work closely with the open source communities and with product and engineering teams, ensuring that community needs and product development align seamlessly. Reporting directly to the Head of Developer Relations, you'll collaborate with fellow DevRel managers across our Databricks, App Dev, and DevRel Programs teams to create a cohesive and impactful open source strategy.

The ideal candidate embodies the values of our Developer Relations team: a deep passion for data and AI, genuine empathy for developers' needs, and a real, demonstrated commitment to open source — including the parts that don't directly benefit Databricks.

More about the DevRel team

The Developer Relations (DevRel) team at Databricks is dedicated to building and fostering relationships with communities of data practitioners. Our goal is to drive awareness and adoption of the Databricks Data + AI Platform — including Lakeflow, Lakebase, Genie Agents, and AI/BI — alongside the open source projects that underpin it, such as Apache Spark™, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, MLflow, Apache Iceberg™, and Omnigent. Our team also owns programs like the