Databricks application questions — all 43, word for word
Databricks hires through Greenhouse. Beyond name, email and CV, its application form asks 43 questions, 40 of them required. 3 of them are required, fixed-choice questions about your eligibility to work. A cover letter is optional.
1462 roles were open when this was last checked, mostly in engineering and sales. The questions below are the form's own wording, not a paraphrase.
What Databricks has open
These are the roles the form was read from, as Databricks titles them, in United States, San Francisco, California, Bengaluru, India, London, United Kingdom:
- AI Automation Engineer
- AI Engineer - FDE (Forward Deployed Engineer)
- AI Engineer – Forward Deployed Engineering (AI FDE)
- AI Engineer – Forward Deployed Engineering (AI FDE), U.S. Public Sector (Federal Focus)
- AI Transformation Leader
- APJ Manufacturing & Automotive Industry GTM Leader
- Account Executive
- Account Executive - Singapore
- Account Executive, Commercial - Hunter
- Accounting Data & Technology Manager
- Accounting Manager, Accounts Receivable
- Alliance RVP, McKinsey
34 of the questions below are ones at most two of the 213 employers measured ask (median: 18), the least standard being “Due to federal contract requirements and the need for immediate client-site access, this role requires U.S. citizenship and either: - An active U.S. Government Secret security clearance or higher; or - A previously held clearance that has recently lapsed but may be eligible for reinstatement or reactivation with our support. Do you currently hold an active Secret clearance or higher, or have you previously held one that may be eligible for reinstatement?”.
The eligibility questions
These are required, and answered from a fixed list rather than in your own words: work authorisation, visa sponsorship or security clearance. Employers often use questions like these to filter applications automatically, but Greenhouse's public data does not say whether Databricks does — so treat them as the answers most likely to matter, not as a verdict. Answer them honestly either way.
| Question | Answers accepted |
|---|---|
| Are you legally authorized to work in the country in which you are applying? required, fixed choice | Yes, No |
| Do you now or will you in the future need sponsorship for employment visa status in the country in which you are applying? required, fixed choice | Yes, No |
| Due to federal contract requirements and the need for immediate client-site access, this role requires U.S. citizenship and either: - An active U.S. Government Secret security clearance or higher; or - A previously held clearance that has recently lapsed but may be eligible for reinstatement or reactivation with our support. Do you currently hold an active Secret clearance or higher, or have you previously held one that may be eligible for reinstatement? required, fixed choice | Yes, No |
Every question on the form
| Question | Type | Required |
|---|---|---|
| Are you legally authorized to work in the country in which you are applying? Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| Do you now or will you in the future need sponsorship for employment visa status in the country in which you are applying? Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| Due to federal contract requirements and the need for immediate client-site access, this role requires U.S. citizenship and either:
- An active U.S. Government Secret security clearance or higher; or
- A previously held clearance that has recently lapsed but may be eligible for reinstatement or reactivation with our support.
Do you currently hold an active Secret clearance or higher, or have you previously held one that may be eligible for reinstatement? Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| First Name | text | Yes |
| Last Name | text | Yes |
| Preferred First Name | text | Yes |
| text | Yes | |
| Phone | text | Yes |
| Resume/CV | file | Yes |
| Cover Letter | file | No |
| LinkedIn Profile | text | No |
| How did you hear about this job? | text | Yes |
| Do you have professional working proficiency in Japanese?
（日本語でプロフェッショナルとして業務を行う能力をお持ちですか？） Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| 名 | text | Yes |
| 姓 | text | Yes |
| 希望名 | text | Yes |
| 電子メール | text | Yes |
| 電話 | text | Yes |
| 履歴書/CV | file | Yes |
| カバーレター | file | No |
| Do you currently or have you previously worked for Databricks in the past? No, Yes - I currently work at Databricks, Yes - Previous Full-Time Employee, Yes - Previous Contractor, Yes - Previous Intern |
select | Yes |
| Do you possess business fluency in Japanese? Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| Website | text | No |
| Do you have end to end sales experience? (from prospecting to closing deals) Yes, No |
select | No |
| Do you have experience selling Cloud Tech and/or Data& AI products? Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| This is an Individual Contributor role, are you comfortable with that? Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| Please confirm whether any of the below applies to you. Select all that apply.
Note: This information will only be used to ensure compliance with U.S. sanctions and export controls. Citizen or permanent resident of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, or Syria, Ordinarily a resident of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria or the Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, or Kherson regions of Ukraine, Ordinarily a resident of Russia or Belarus and not willing to relocate for a Databricks role, None of the above |
multiselect | Yes |
| If you selected a response to the prior question other than “none of the above,” please confirm whether any of the following also applies to you. Select all that apply. U.S. citizen, U.S. non-citizen national, U.S. permanent resident (Green Card holder), Individual granted asylum in the U.S., Individual granted refugee status in the U.S., Individual granted citizenship in a country other than Cuba, Iran, North Korea, or Syria (+3 more) |
multiselect | Yes |
| Please confirm whether you are based in the United Kingdom or are willing to relocate there. The role requires you to be based in this location. Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| Do you have experience in building agentic applications in production? Please give an example | textarea | Yes |
| Do you have experience building production-grade machine learning deployments on AWS, Azure, or GCP. Please give an example | textarea | Yes |
| Do you have experience in any of the following Data Science, ML, LLM, GenAI, MLOps |
multiselect | Yes |
| What excites you about this role? | textarea | Yes |
| Do you have more than 5 years of experience? Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| Describe a production ML or GenAI system where you worked at the model level (training, fine-tuning, optimization, or evaluation). Include: | textarea | Yes |
| Over the past 18 months, what percentage of your work has involved: | textarea | Yes |
| Describe your experience working directly with enterprise customers on ML/AI solutions: | textarea | Yes |
| LinkedIn Profile URL | text | Yes |
| GitHub Profile URL | text | Yes |
| Do you have hands-on experience owning end-to-end data and AI architectures in production (including ingestion, Spark transformation, cloud storage, orchestration, and ML/AI integration) within a consultative or customer-facing role? Please summarize your most relevant project. | text | Yes |
| Which of the following core Spark and production engineering concepts do you have hands-on experience implementing for external clients or internal stakeholders? Production ETL/ELT pipelines (Batch & Streaming), Spark runtime internals optimization & performance tuning (e.g., data skew, spill), Deploying Spark within cloud ecosystems (AWS, Azure, or GCP), Implementing CI/CD and MLOps workflows alongside Spark pipelines |
multiselect | Yes |
| Do you have business-level fluency in Japanese? Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| Please confirm whether you are based in Germany or willing to relocate there. The office is based in Munich and will require you to come in regularly for team or client meetings. Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| Describe a production ML or GenAI system where you did model-level work (training, fine-tuning, optimization, or evaluation) on a transformer-based model (GPT, Llama, Claude, Mistral, Gemma, or similar). | textarea | Yes |
| Are you willing and able to travel to customer sites approximately once every 4–8 weeks, as business needs require? Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| Please confirm whether you are based in the Netherlands or are willing to relocate to the Netherlands. The office is based in Amsterdam and will require you to come into the office regularly for team or client meetings. Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| What experience do you have using AI for automation and transformation? | textarea | No |
| Do you have more than 3+ years of experience? Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| Do you currently reside near the city of San Francisco, CA, Mountain View, CA or Sunnyvale, CA, and if so, which of these locations are you near? | textarea | Yes |
| Please describe your experience working with SAP S/4HANA, including key modules, implementation phases, and your specific roles. | textarea | Yes |
| Please describe a high-impact automation project you led, including the problem addressed, your leadership approach, and the key metrics used to evaluate its success. | textarea | Yes |
What it's really asking about
Grouped by what each question is for, so you can prepare the answers that repeat across employers.
| Topic | Questions |
|---|---|
| Other | 29 |
| Relocation | 3 |
| Portfolio and links | 2 |
| Work authorisation | 2 |
| Years of experience | 2 |
| Cover letter | 1 |
| How you heard of them | 1 |
| Language proficiency | 1 |
| Remote or on-site | 1 |
| Visa sponsorship | 1 |
What other employers ask
The same question rarely comes out the same way twice. These employers' forms are measured the same way, from their own job boards:
Carbon Direct · Carbonchain · Carvana · Centrum Health · Charles · Chime Financial
Before you apply
Have the answers to the required questions ready before you open the form — Databricks's asks for 40 of them, and Greenhouse does not save a partial application by default. Settle the eligibility questions first — they are the ones with no room to elaborate, so knowing your answer before you start tells you whether the rest of the form is worth your time.