Data Engineering Architect - Databricks
First seen by Alion on Sep 16, 2026.
Primary Responsibilities :
- Define and drive the Databricks Data Engineering architecture and strategy, aligned with enterprise Data & Analytics standards.
- Take end-to-end ownership of Databricks solutions from architecture and design through implementation, production deployment, support, and optimization.
- Define and enforce policy-based governance and cost controls across Databricks workloads, including Apps, Agents, compute, AI/ML resources, and AI Gateway.
- Establish and enforce RBAC and least-privilege security across Unity Catalog, Databricks Apps, Agents, AI Gateway, service principals, and Dev/QA/Production environments.
- Design reusable data ingestion and transformation frameworks using Databricks, Spark, Delta Lake, SQL, Python/PySpark, and Lake flow.
- Architect scalable Lakehouse solutions on Databricks and AWS supporting batch, streaming, near-real-time, analytics, and AI use cases.
- Design and support Agentic AI and Databricks Apps development, including architecture, deployment, integration, security, monitoring, and production readiness.
- Establish and enforce Data Engineering Governance and Security using Unity Catalog, including RBAC, least privilege, service principals, data access controls, lineage, auditing, and data quality.
- Define engineering and governance standards across Dev, QA, and Production, including Git, Branches etc.
- Design data integration patterns for SAP/ERP, databases, APIs, files, streaming platforms, and cloud services.
- Design and evaluate data models and serving patterns for BI, analytics, Data Science, AI, applications, and downstream consumers.
- Establish standards for Databricks compute, performance optimization, monitoring, reliability, and cost management.
- Proactively identify and resolve architecture, security, governance, performance, and production issues.
- Work closely with Security, Cloud, Infrastructure, Data Governance, Data Science, BI, application, and business teams to deliver enterprise solutions.
- Provide technical leadership, architecture reviews, hands-on prototyping, engineering standards, and mentoring.
- Demonstrate a strong ownership mindset by independently driving initiatives, managing dependencies and risks, and ensuring successful delivery.
You Must Have :
- 9+ years of Data Engineering/Data Architecture experience with 4+ years of hands-on Databricks experience.
- Strong experience with Databricks, Delta Lake, Spark, SQL, Python/PySpark, and Lakehouse architecture.
- Strong knowledge of Unity Catalog, Data Governance, Data Security, RBAC, lineage, auditing, data quality, and access controls.
- Experience designing enterprise batch, streaming, and reusable data pipelines.
- 1+ years of Experience with Databricks AI/BI, Genie, Apps, and other emerging services.
- Strong AWS experience, including S3, Lambda, Glue, CloudWatch, RDS, and Redshift.
- Strong experience in Git, Dev/QA/Production deployment patterns.
- Strong understanding of data modeling, performance optimization, scalability, reliability, security, and cost management.
- Proven ability to own complex technical initiatives, solve production issues, and work effectively across multiple technical and business teams.
- Excellent communication, architecture, problem-solving, and technical leadership skills.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Data Engineering, or a related field.
Nice to Have :
- Databricks and/or AWS certifications.
- Experience with dbt, Sigma, Tableau, or Power BI.
- Experience with enterprise FinOps, cost/usage monitoring, and platform governance.
- SAP integration or functional experience.
Skills
Databricks, Data Engineering, Delta Lake, Spark, Python, Data Governance, SQL, Data Modeling, Data Architect, Data Ingestion