Solutions Architect, EMEA Startups – France

About the role

Databricks is a Data and AI company whose Solutions Architects help customers turn complex data and AI challenges into secure, scalable solutions. This role sits in the EMEA Startups team, which works with fast-growing, digital-native companies moving from early technical exploration to production adoption. You will engage founders, CTOs, VPs of Engineering/Data, architects and technical leaders to identify high-impact use cases, shape modern data and AI architectures and help make Databricks a strategic part of their roadmap. The role covers new-logo accounts in the France, Spain and Italy Startups segment and SMBs, with selective support for expansion in existing accounts.

Key responsibilities

• Partner with Startups Account Executives to build and execute technical account strategy for new logos and growth on existing accounts.
• Engage founders and technical decision-makers in consultative discovery and translate business priorities into data, analytics, AI and platform use cases.
• Lead the technical sales motion from discovery through evaluation: define success criteria, build solution architectures, deliver demos, guide sizing, run or coordinate proofs of concept and set a path to adoption.
• Provide technical leadership across data engineering, data warehousing, analytics and BI, machine learning, GenAI, Apps, Lakehouse and related cloud-native workloads.
• Prioritise engagements using account context and customer signals such as consumption, user activity, feature adoption, security and cost.
• Contribute to the startup and technical ecosystem through workshops, office hours, meetups, events and partner activity.
• Work with Sales, Product, Engineering, delivery, Support and partners to remove technical blockers and accelerate adoption.

Required profile

• 5+ years in a customer-facing pre-sales, technical architecture, consulting or equivalent role.
• Track record of leading discovery and architecture discussions with software engineers, data teams and senior technical decision-makers.
• Experience designing distributed data systems and cloud-native solutions.
• Experience taking ambiguous customer problems from discovery through solution design to a clear technical outcome.
• Strong business communication skills, including explaining technical trade-offs and presenting, whiteboarding and writing points of view.
• Ability to work autonomously across multiple accounts and with Account Executives.
• Fluency in French and English; Italian and/or Spanish is a strong plus.
• Willingness to travel up to 20-30%, mainly for customer meetings and events.

Required skills

• Hands-on programming in at least one of Python, SQL, Scala or Java.
• Experience with one or more public cloud providers such as AWS, Azure or GCP.
• Depth in at least one domain such as data engineering, data warehousing, analytics and BI, data science, machine learning, GenAI, streaming, OLTP or data governance.
• Preferred: experience with high-growth tech companies, SaaS, founders or venture-backed organisations; Apache Spark, Delta Lake, MLflow; Databricks and cloud certifications.