Lead Solutions Architect (Digital Natives Business)

London, United Kingdom
Last month
Seniority
Lead
Posted
9 Apr 2026 (Last month)

REQ ID: FEQ227R147

Location: London, UK

Recruiter: Dina Hussain

At Databricks, our core values are at the heart of everything we do; creating a culture of proactiveness and a customer-centric mindset guides us to create a unified platform that makes data and AI accessible to everyone. We aim to inspire our customers to make informed decisions that push their business forward.

In the UK&IDigital Natives Hunting territory, we move at the speed of the most innovative companies in the world. We don't just sell software; we partner with technical founders, CTOs, and VPs of Engineering at high-growth startups to build the future of AI. You will be an essential part of this mission, using your executive-level technical credibility and "Hunter" mindset to win mindshare and acquire new logos. Join us in our quest to change how people work with data and make a better world!

Reporting to Manager, Field Engineering

The impact you will have:

  • Executive Evangelism & Thought Leadership: Act as a Technical Advisor, building peer-to-peer relationships with CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and technical founders at high-growth DNBs. You will win technical mindshare in "first meetings" by articulating a vision for Data + AI that aligns with their rapid innovation cycles.
  • Drive New Logo Motion: Execute the high-velocity "Hunter DNA"—obsessing over Time to Value, qualifying out ruthlessly when necessary, and focusing energy on hard-to-win, prestigious accounts that establish Databricks as the standard for the UK startup ecosystem.
  • Ecosystem Building: Drive awareness within the UK startup and VC ecosystem. You will be the face of Databricks at relevant events, building strategic relationships with VCs, accelerators, and incubators to identify and influence the next generation of "unicorns."
  • Strategic Technical Discovery: Move beyond traditional "hands-on" SA work to focus on high-level architecture and strategic road-mapping. You will bridge complex business requirements with technical solutions, ensuring that the Databricks Intelligence platform is seen as a strategic enabler of a startup's core product.
  • Regional Mentorship: Be a role model and mentor for the wider Field Engineering team, specifically coaching Solutions Architects on how to engage effectively with CxOs and navigate the unique demands of the digital-native segment.
  • Technical Community Engagement: Develop high-impact, customer-facing collateral, and lead technical seminars or meet-ups that position Databricks as a thought leader in Generative AI, LLMs, and modern data stack architecture.

What we look for:

  • Startup Leadership & Scaling Experience:10+ years of professional experience, including significant time spent as a tech co-founder, Head of Engineering, VP-level leader, or high-impact technical contributor within high-growth startups. We value the "in the trenches" experience of scaling a business and technical stack from the ground up. While you possess the credibility to engage with senior founders, you maintain a hands-on technical edge and aren't afraid to dive into the architecture.
  • Executive Presence: Proven ability to influence and win trust with senior technical stakeholders and C-level executives in innovative, fast-moving environments.
  • Technical Depth with an Evangelist Spike: Strong technical background (8+ years) in Operational Databases, Data Engineering, Data Science, or AI, but with a primary skillset focused on technical evangelism, storytelling, and high-level architectural vision rather than tactical delivery.
  • Operational Database and Real-Time Data Architecture:Experience with modern operational database architectures (OLTP) and building scalable, data-driven applications, including connecting transactional systems with analytical platforms to support real-time analytics, AI/agent workloads, and operational applications.
  • Startup Ecosystem Knowledge: 5+ years of deep familiarity with the startup and VC landscape. You know who the key players are and how to navigate the network of investors, accelerators, and founders.
  • High Velocity Mindset: Experience working with early-stage, high-growth digital natives where speed, agility, and "Time to Value" are prioritized over traditional enterprise sales cycles.
  • Problem-Solving Agility: Ability to innovate technical solutions for specialized customer needs and navigate a competitive landscape where prospects may already be using "greenfield" or bleeding-edge tech stacks.
  • Communication Excellence: Exceptional ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both highly technical audiences and business decision-makers.
  • Nice to have:
    • Familiarity withPostgreSQL-compatible systems and architectures enabling low-latency feature and application data serving.
    • Experience migrating or modernisingoperational databases (e.g. Aurora/ RDS/ PostgreSQL) toward Lakehouse integrated architectures.
    • Deep expertise in articulating the strategic and commercial value ofGenerative AI, including Large Language Models (LLMs), RAG architectures, and the shift towardCompound AI Systems.
    • Familiarity with the latest advancements inAgentic Workflows, model fine-tuning (Mosaic AI), and efficient inference at scale.
    • Established presence in thetechnical community (e.g., high-impact blog, regular public speaking at major conferences like Data+AI Summit, AWS re:Invent, or significant open-source contributions).

About Databricks

Databricks is the data and AI company. More than 10,000 organizations worldwide — including Comcast, Condé Nast, Grammarly, and over 50% of the Fortune 500 — rely on the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform to unify and democratize data, analytics and AI. Databricks is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices around the globe and was founded by the original creators of Lakehouse, Apache Spark™, Delta Lake and MLflow. To learn more, follow Databricks on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

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.

Related Jobs

View all jobs

Lead Solutions Architect (Digital Natives Business)

Databricks London, United Kingdom

Resident Solutions Architect (Professional Services)

Databricks London, United Kingdom

Delivery Solutions Architect

Databricks London, United Kingdom

Data Platform Solutions Architect (Professional Services)

Databricks London, United Kingdom
Hybrid

Solutions Architect (Retail/CPG)

Databricks London, United Kingdom

Data Platform Solutions Architect (Professional Services) - Emerging Enterprise & DNB

Databricks London, United Kingdom

Industry Insights

Discover insightful articles, industry insights, expert tips, and curated resources.

Where to Advertise Data Engineering Jobs in the UK (2026 Guide)

Advertising data engineering jobs in the UK requires a different approach to most technical hiring. Data engineers occupy a distinct discipline that sits between software engineering, data science and cloud infrastructure — and the strongest candidates identify firmly with the data engineering community rather than with adjacent roles. General job boards consistently conflate data engineering with data analysis, data science and BI development, producing high application volumes but low candidate quality for specialist pipeline and platform roles. This guide, published by DataEngineeringJobs.co.uk, covers where to advertise data engineering roles in the UK in 2026, how the main platforms compare, what employers should expect to pay, and what the data says about hiring across different role types.

Data Engineering Jobs UK 2026: What to Expect Over the Next 3 Years

Data engineering has become one of the most strategically important disciplines in the entire technology sector — and one of the most reliably in-demand. Every organisation that wants to use data to make decisions, train AI models, personalise products, manage risk, or understand its customers depends on data engineers to build the infrastructure that makes any of that possible. Without well-designed, reliable data pipelines, the most sophisticated machine learning model is worthless and the most ambitious analytics strategy is undeliverable. That foundational importance has made data engineering hiring remarkably resilient through the technology market corrections of the past few years. Where headcount reductions fell heavily on some engineering disciplines, demand for data engineers held firm — because the work of building and maintaining data infrastructure cannot be deferred in the way that some product development can. The data keeps coming. The pipelines need to work. But the data engineering jobs market of 2026 is not simply a stable version of what it was three years ago. The discipline has undergone a series of architectural shifts — from batch to streaming, from on-premise data warehouses to cloud-native lakehouses, from hand-rolled pipelines to declarative transformation frameworks, and most recently toward AI-augmented data engineering workflows that are beginning to reshape what the role looks like in practice. The employers hiring data engineers today are asking for a meaningfully different skill set than those hiring three years ago. The candidates who will thrive over the next three years are those who understand where the discipline is heading — which architectural patterns are becoming standard, which technologies are defining the modern data stack, and how the definition of a data engineering career is evolving toward a richer intersection of infrastructure, analytics, and AI enablement. This article breaks down what the UK data engineering jobs market is likely to look like through to 2028 — covering the titles emerging right now, the technologies driving employer demand, the skills that will matter most, and how to position your career ahead of the curve.

New Data Engineering Employers to Watch in 2026: UK and Global Companies Driving the Data Revolution

Data engineering is at the heart of the digital economy, transforming raw data into actionable insights, powering analytics, AI systems, and cloud infrastructure. As the UK and global markets continue to invest heavily in data platforms, pipelines, and real-time analytics, demand for skilled data engineers is growing rapidly. For professionals exploring opportunities on www.DataEngineeringJobs.co.uk , the critical question is: which companies are expanding, hiring, and shaping the future of data-driven business? This article highlights new data engineering employers to watch in 2026, including UK startups, scale-ups, and international firms expanding in the UK.