Program Manager, Public Sector (Commercial Legal)

As a Program Manager for Public Sector in Commercial Legal at Databricks, you will own the contracting engine for one of the fastest-growing segments of the business: US and international public-sector deals. Reporting to the Director & Associate General Counsel, Commercial, you will act as the operational backbone for the public-sector contracting function, working in close coordination with Public Sector legal, sales, operations, product, engineering, finance, and other cross-functional stakeholders.

This is a mission-critical and highly independent role designed for a proactive, focused person who thrives on building programs in-flight to drive accountability and positive, timely outcomes. You won't just track workstreams — you will own them. You will design and manage contracting programs and workflows, build playbooks and governance frameworks, route and manage complex government deals through stakeholders, handle routine contracting matters under attorney supervision, and support some contract management/contract lifecycle work (including Databricks' GSA MAS). If you are an operationally fierce program manager with government-contracting chops and extraordinary interpersonal skills who wants to be the linchpin to Databricks' pubsec legal function, we want to talk to you.

Location: Washington, DC metro area (hybrid).

The Impact You Will Have

• Own the Public Sector Contracting Program: Act as the central driver for US public-sector contracting operations (US Federal/Defense, Defense Industrial Base, and SLED), plus Canada and priority overseas markets.
• Drive Cross-Functional Deal Execution: Coordinate stakeholders, including sales, deal desk, operations, security, compliance, and finance through a predictable, well-governed pipeline. Keep stakeholders and executives well informed about the work and accountable to deadlines. No surprises, no missed deadlines, and exceptions are handled with aplomb.
• Manage Pubsec Contracts and Contract Lifecycle: Manage Databricks' pubsec schedules, including our GSA MAS and similar vehicles. Track contracts from RFI to signature to closeout, and support amendments.
• Build Enablement: Create enablement for Legal and GTM teams so that routine matters can be handled at scale with minimal legal involvement. Build and maintain playbooks, talk tracks, clause libraries, and training that support self-service for sales teams and decrease deal friction.
• Strengthen Post-Award Obligation Management: Own (in collaboration with Compliance) traceability for non-standard contractual commitments, such as by building obligation matrices, aligning them to accountable owners, systems, and controls across the organization.
• Scale Internationally: Develop and govern contracting programs for priority international markets to create repeatable processes to drive stakeholder engagement and forward progress.
• Drive Continuous Improvement: Constantly audit the status quo to support increasing scale and anticipate future needs before they arise. Develop training and GTM enablement for sales, delivery, finance, and partner teams.
• Handle Routine Contracting Matters: Support deal flow for initial triage (including pre-award RFI/RFP support and coordination) and routine matters (under attorney supervision).

What We Look For

• Government Contracting Substance: 6+ years in government contracts, public procurement, or contract administration at a technology company (required). Bonus if you've previously been a COR/COTR. Practical familiarity with US pubsec regulatory requirements, prime/sub relationships, and commercial flowdown clauses.
• Partner/channel Experience: Prior work with various channel contracting structures (resellers, distributors, cloud marketplaces) is critical.
• SaaS & Cloud Contracting Fluency: Experience with subscription/consumption-based SaaS agreements and interactions with finance, deal desk, and security/product/privacy terms. You understand how commercial cloud contracting intersects with government procurement requirements.
• Builder Mentality: Demonstrated ability to build contracting operations from scratch with first-principles thinking and an eye to scale — intake, playbooks, dashboards, metrics, governance. You have done this before, not just maintained someone else's system.
• A Bias for Action: You anticipate and proactively uncover issues and blockers, communicate clearly and persuasively to gain and maintain stakeholder alignment, and reliably resolve issues without anything getting past you.
• Interdependence without Authority: You thrive in matrixed, highly interdependent operations where your success depends on the systems you build and the depth and quality of your stakeholder relationships.
• Balanced Emotional Intelligence and Mission-Focus: Proven ability to display grace under pressure, patience, collegiality, and resilience (learning from one's mistakes) while simultaneously raising the bar and truth-seeking to ensure things happen the right way for the company. You hold others accountable and expect the same of yourself.
• AI Tools & Systems: Proficiency in leveraging AI tools to optimize legal or contracting operations and working with CLMs, CRMs, ticketing systems, and workflow automation tools.
• International Experience Welcomed: Experience with multi-jurisdictional government procurement and foreign language skills are a plus.