Staff Data Platform Architect (Databricks) [210325]

Staff Data Platform Architect (Databricks)

Hartford, CT, hybrid (on-site 3 days per week) 

Department: Data & Analytics Platform
Business Unit: Infrastructure and Cloud Services
Reports To: Senior Director, Data Platform

Role Overview

We are seeking a Staff Data Platform Architect to serve as the primary technical consultant and strategist for our enterprise Databricks ecosystem. This is a high-impact, senior individual contributor role focused on driving technical excellence, automation, and fiscal efficiency.

Unlike a traditional administrator, you will act as an internal consultant to our extensive Databricks team, providing the blueprint for scalable pipelines, advanced automation, and long-term capacity forecasting. You will bridge the gap between complex infrastructure (Unix/Linux) and modern AI/ML workflows, ensuring our platform is both cutting-edge and cost-effective.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Consultation & Architecture

• Act as the Technical Authority for Databricks, advising engineering teams on Unity Catalog governance, workspace topology, and complex migration patterns.

• Consult on the design of high-performance data pipelines, specifically optimizing Delta Live Tables (DLT) and structured streaming for scale.

• Partner with teams using Ab Initio and Fivetran to ensure seamless integration and architectural alignment across the multi-platform ecosystem.

Platform Optimization & Financial Forecasting

• Capacity Planning: Own the forecasting of DBU consumption and partner with leadership on multi-year contract utilization and commitment management.

• Cost Engineering: Design and implement sophisticated cost-attribution models (chargeback/showback) and proactively identify “leaks” in compute spend.

• Performance Tuning: Define enterprise standards for Z-ordering, partitioning, and compute strategy to maximize performance-per-dollar.

Advanced Automation & AI Operations

• Architect “self-healing” infrastructure through Python and Bash automation, reducing manual toil for the wider engineering team.

• Consult on the operationalization of ML models, leveraging MLflow and Model Serving to move experiments into production.

• Guide the integration of Generative AI and LLM-backed workflows into the standard data engineering lifecycle.

Infrastructure & Linux Engineering

• Provide deep-tier expertise for the Unix/Linux environments underpinning our compute nodes.

• Develop advanced automation scripts for cluster lifecycle management, monitoring, and security hardening.

Required Qualifications

• Experience: 7+ years in Data Engineering/Platform roles, with at least 4 years of deep architectural experience in Databricks.

• The “Consultant” Mindset: Proven ability to advise multiple teams, influence technical roadmaps, and communicate complex trade-offs to senior leadership.

• Technical Depth: Mastery of Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, and PySpark.

• Systems Expertise: Strong proficiency in Unix/Linux systems administration and shell scripting (Bash) for infrastructure automation.

• Financial Acumen: Experience managing cloud consumption (DBUs), forecasting usage, and implementing cost-governance tools.

• Tooling: High proficiency with Git-based CI/CD and experience in Oracle environments.

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform/Ansible) for Databricks provider.

• Exposure to Ab Initio or Fivetran in a large-scale enterprise environment.

• Background in highly regulated industries (e.g., Finance or Insurance).

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