Databricks Cron — Schedule Jobs and Notebooks

Databricks uses Quartz cron syntax for scheduling jobs and notebook runs:

second minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week

When creating a Databricks job schedule via the UI or API, you specify a cron expression in Quartz format:

{
  "schedule": {
    "quartz_cron_expression": "0 0 12 * * ?",
    "timezone_id": "America/New_York"
  }
}

Key points:

• Uses full Quartz syntax with seconds, ?, L, W, # modifiers
• Timezone is configurable per job
• Supports pause/resume of schedules
• Can set up alerts for job failures

Common Databricks cron patterns:

• Daily at 6 AM: 0 0 6 * * ?
• Every 15 minutes: 0 */15 * * * ?
• Weekdays at 8 AM: 0 0 8 ? * MON-FRI