Databricks raised more than $5b in Series L funding at a $134b valuation, much of which will be used for an employee tender. It also added around $2b in debt capacity.

  1. Clemens Mewald in SF (Stealth)

    1. Role: Director of PM, ML & DS @ Databricks (3.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: CEO @ Brain Co ($30M from Elad Gil), Head of Product @ Instabase, PM Lead of ML @ Google AI & Brain, MIT MBA

    3. Description: Left Brain Co on 1/26. “Something new”

  2. Rajkumar Sen in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Eng @ Databricks (2.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Co-Founder & CTO @ Arcion Labs ($18M from Bessemer —> acquired by Databricks for $100M), Director of Eng @ MemSQL, Principal MTS @ Oracle

    3. Description: Left Databricks on 2/26. “Unemployed @ Freelance”

    4. Twitter

  3. Zongheng Yang in SF (Stealth)

    1. Role: SWE Intern @ Databricks (<1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: PhD, Postdoc Researcher, and Lead for SkyPilot @ UC Berkeley (9.5K GH stars), SWE @ Google Brain

    3. Description: Stealth since 2024

    4. Site, Twitter

  4. Paul Oglivie in PA (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Eng Director of ML & Co-Author of Foundational MLflow papers @ Databricks (6 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Sr Eng Manager @ LinkedIn, CMU PhD & Research Assistant

    3. Description: Left Databricks on 8/23. “Putting Machine Learning into production is hard. I'm passionate about making it easier. I've worked on this problem at LinkedIn and Databricks.”

  5. Robert Khoury in SF (Co-Founder @ Amdahl AI)

    1. Role: SWE, built Genie @ Databricks (4 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Co-Founder & CTO @ Intent, Menlo Ventures Fellow, SWE @ Samsara and Uber, Berkeley CS

    3. Description: “Build marketing campaigns informed by real customer insights”

  6. Neetish Sharma in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: PM Intern @ Databricks (<1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Co-Founder & CEO @ Binocular ($5M from KP, Abstract, Polychain), Stanford MS & BS, Greylock X Fellow

    3. Description: Left Databricks on 4/25 with no updates

    4. Site, Twitter

  7. Rakesh Soni in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Sr Director of PM @ Databricks (5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Product Leadership @ Airbnb, Sr PM @ AWS, Biz Dev @ Cisco, Wharton MBA, Georgia Tech MS & BS

    3. Description: Left Airbnb on 6/24. Advising startups since then.

    4. [email protected]

  8. Yash Jain in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: SWE Intern @ Databricks (<1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Founder @ Rovr (YC F25), MTS @ Mercor, Berkeley CS

    3. Description: Left Rovr on 1/26 with no updates

    4. [email protected]

  9. Rahul Govind & Aakash Japi in SF (Co-Founder @ Tachyon)

    1. Role: Sr SWE @ Databricks (5.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: SWE @ Google and Snap, University of Illinois MS and CS

    3. Description: “An intelligent code security suite that uses AI to find and fix vulnerabilities in your codebase.”

  10. Brandon Weng in Canada (Co-Founder @ Fluid Inference)

    1. Role: SWE @ Databricks (2.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Lead Eng @ BREVIAN

    3. Description: “Fluid Inference is an Applied AI Research Lab building the future of ambient intelligence.”

    4. Twitter, Site, GH, [email protected]

  11. Matt Rulon in Denver (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Founding SDR & Director of Emerging Enterprise Sales @ Databricks (10 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: SDR @ Cloudera

    3. Description: Left Databricks on 9/25 with no updates

  12. Max Allen in NYC (Stealth)

    1. Role: SWE @ Databricks (<1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Founding Eng on Fraud Team & Staff SWE @ Ramp, SWE @ Neeva, MIT CS

    3. Description: Stealth since 10/25

  13. George Pantazis in US (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Staff SWE @ Databricks (5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: 2nd FTE & Lead SWE @ Future ($110M from KP)

    3. Description: Left Databricks on 4/25. “Currently: in the lab”

  14. Onkur Sen in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Sr Eng Manager @ Databricks (3.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Founder & CTO @ Brutus AI (backed by Pear VC —> acquired by Forta Health), AI Eng @ Microsoft, Dartmouth BA

    3. Description: On sabbatical since 4/25

    4. Site, [email protected]

  15. Ashish Selvaraj in SF (Founder @ Kotyo & Sidekit)

    1. Role: SWE Intern @ Databricks (<1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Waterloo CS, Founder @ Not Evil Sudoko (side project with 180K installs), CTO @ rideBelay

    3. Description: Two YCW26 companies listed as current. Kotyo may be more recent pivot: “Engineer you can iMessage”

    4. Funding: YC W26

  16. Zi Dong in SF (Stealth)

    1. Role: Sr Eng Manager @ Databricks (3.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Eng Manager @ Samsara, Stanford MS & BS

    3. Description: “Making computer use reliable”

  17. David Oppenheimer in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Sr Staff SWE @ Databricks (4 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Sr Staff SWE @ Google, Berkeley PhD & MS, Princeton BSE

    3. Description: Left Databricks on 4/25 with no updates

  18. Joshua Hartman in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Director of Eng - MosaicML @ Databricks (3 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Director of Eng @ LinkedIn

    3. Description: Left Databricks on 3/25

    4. Twitter

  19. Daniel Chang in US (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Eng / Research @ Databricks (3 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Advisor @ Felicis & BCV, Angel @ A16Z,

    3. Description: No full time updates or roles since leaving Databricks in 2024

  20. William B in San Diego (Founder @ L1 Therapeutics)

    1. Role: L7 Solutions Architect @ Databricks (4 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Solutions Architect Team Lead @ Tempus AI, Principal Scientist @ Exact Sciences, Oxford & Cambridge

    3. Description: “Founder of an early‑stage biotechnology company focused on genomics‑guided therapeutics”

  21. Daniel Katz in NYC (Co-Founder @ Rehearsals)

    1. Role: Staff SWE @ Databricks (1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Staff SWE & Tech Lead @ Robinhood (Productionized all 8 internal services for Robinhood’s in-house self-clearing system), FDE @ Palantir, Stanford MS

    3. Description: “Rehearse your next launch with AI replicas, grounded in public data and validated with real humans.”

  22. Min Zhou in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Staff SWE & 1st Eng of TiDB Team @ Databricks (4 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Sr Staff SWE @ LinkedIn, Sr SDE @ AWS, Principal Eng @ Tango Me

    3. Description: Left LinkedIn on 11/25

    4. Twitter

  23. Tomas Nykodym in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: SWE @ Databricks (7 yrs)

    2. Description: Left Databricks on 9/24. “Exploring a personal project”

  24. Christopher Hill in Seattle (Stealth)

    1. Role: Sr Staff SWE @ Databricks (1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Tech Lead & Manager @ Google, Staff SWE @ Google, University of Maryland PhD

    3. Description: Stealth since 1/26

  25. Daniel King in Seattle (Stealth)

    1. Role: Sr Staff MLE @ Databricks (2 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Early MLE @ MosaicML, Applied Research Scientist @ AI2

    3. Description: Left Databricks on 7/25

  26. Abhinav Venigalla in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: NLP Architect @ Databricks (1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Research Scientist @ MosaicML, ML Researcher @ Cerebras, MIT MEng & CS

    3. Description: Left Databricks on 8/24 with no updates

  27. Srinath Shankar in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: SWE & Manager - Spark Serverless Team Lead @ Databricks (3.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: SWE Manager @ Snowflake, Staff SWE @ LinkedIn, SWE @ Cloudera, Principal Research SDE @ Microsoft, University of Wisconsin-Madison PhD

    3. Description: Left Snowflake on 4/24 with no updates

  28. Meng Tong in SF (Stealth)

    1. Role: SWE @ Databricks (1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: SWE @ ZettaBlock, Observe, AWS

    3. Description: Stealth since 2025

    4. [email protected]

  29. Richard Zhu in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: SWE Intern @ Databricks (<1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Quant @ Citadel, Neo Scholar, Berkeley CS

    3. Description: Left Citadel on 1/26 with no updates

    4. [email protected]

  30. Rishan G in NYC (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: SWE @ Databricks (3.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Sr SWE @ Graphite, UCLA CS

    3. Description: Left Graphite on 1/26 with no updates

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