ALTA IT Services, LLC · 1 day ago
Databricks Engineer
Washington, DC
Contract
Onsite
Senior Level, Lead/Staff
10+ years expALTA IT Services, LLC is focused on delivering outsourced services and workforce solutions across North America. They are seeking a Databricks Engineer to design, build, and operate data pipelines on the Enterprise Data Platform using Databricks and Apache Spark, collaborating with various teams to ensure the delivery of secure and performant data solutions.
ConsultingInformation TechnologyStaffing Agency
No H1B
U.S. Citizen Only
Responsibilities
Build and maintain end-to-end pipelines in Databricks using Spark (PySpark) for ingestion, transformation, and publication of curated datasets
Implement streaming / near-real-time patterns using Spark Structured Streaming (or equivalent), including state management, checkpointing, and recovery
Design incremental processing, partitioning strategies, and data layout/file sizing approaches to optimize performance and cost
Develop reusable pipeline components (common libraries, parameterized jobs, standardized patterns) to accelerate delivery across domains
Develop and operationalize workflows in Python and R for data preparation, analysis support, and research-ready extracts
Package code for repeatable execution (dependency management, environment reproducibility, job configuration)
Implement data quality controls for batch and streaming (schema enforcement, completeness/validity checks, late/duplicate event handling, reconciliation)
Build pipeline observability: logging, metrics, alerting, and dashboards; support on-call/incident response and root-cause analysis
Create runbooks and operational procedures for critical pipelines and streaming services
Ensure secure handling of sensitive data and apply least-privilege principles in pipeline design and execution
Contribute lineage notes, dataset definitions, and operational documentation to support reuse and auditability
Use version control and CI/CD practices for notebooks/code (code reviews, automated testing where feasible, deployment/promotion across environments)
Collaborate with stakeholders to refine requirements, define SLAs, and deliver incrementally th measurable outcomes
Implement Lakeflow/Delta Live Tables (DLT) pipelines with data quality expectations, materialized views, and streaming tables; design pipeline DAGs and maintain declarative ETL workflows
Design and implement medallion architecture patterns (Bronze/Silver/Gold) with appropriate data quality gates, schema evolution strategies, and layer-specific optimization techniques (OPTIMIZE, VACUUM, Z-ordering/liquid clustering)
Develop and maintain comprehensive testing strategies including unit tests for transformation logic, integration tests for end-to-end pipelines, and data quality validation using frameworks like Great Expectations or deequ
Perform data modeling and schema design for dimensional models, slowly changing dimensions (SCD), and analytical structures; collaborate on entity definitions and grain decisions
Contribute to Unity Catalog governance by registering datasets with metadata/descriptions/tags, implementing row/column-level security where required, and maintaining accurate lineage information
Qualification
Required
Strong proficiency in Python and R for data engineering and analytical workflows
Hands-on experience with Databricks and Apache Spark, including Structured Streaming (watermarking, stateful processing concepts, checkpointing, exactly-once/at-least-once tradeoffs)
Strong SQL skills for transformation and validation
Experience building production-grade pipelines: idempotency, incremental loads, backfills, schema evolution, and error handling
Experience implementing data quality checks and validation for both batch and event streams (late arrivals, deduplication, event-time vs processing-time)
Observability skills: logging/metrics/alerting, troubleshooting, and performance tuning (partitions, joins/shuffles, caching, file sizing)
Proficiency with Git and CI/CD concepts for data pipelines, Databricks asset bundling, Databricks application deployments, and proficiency using Databricks CLI
Experience with lakehouse table formats and patterns (e.g., Delta tables) including compaction/optimization and lifecycle management
Familiarity with orchestration patterns (Databricks Workflows/Jobs) and dependency management
Experience with governance controls (catalog permissions, secure data access patterns, metadata/lineage expectations)
Knowledge of message/event platforms and streaming ingestion patterns (e.g., Kafka/Kinesis equivalents) and sink patterns for serving layers
Experience collaborating with research/analytics stakeholders and translating analytical needs into engineered data products
Strong problem-solving and debugging across ingestion ? transformation ? serving
Clear technical communication and documentation discipline
Ability to work across product/architecture/governance teams in a regulated environment
Deep Delta Lake expertise including time travel, Change Data Feed (CDF), MERGE operations, CLONE, table constraints, and optimization techniques; understanding of liquid clustering and table maintenance best practices
Experience with Lakeflow/Delta Live Tables (DLT) including expectations framework, materialized vs. streaming table patterns, and declarative pipeline design
Proficiency with testing frameworks (pytest, Great Expectations, deequ) and test-driven development practices for production data pipelines
Data modeling skills including dimensional modeling (star/snowflake schemas), medallion architecture implementation, and slowly changing dimension (SCD) pattern implementation
AWS data services experience including S3 optimization, IAM role configuration for data access, and CloudWatch integration; understanding of cost optimization patterns
Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent experience
10+ years of data engineering experience, including production Spark-based batch pipelines and streaming implementations
Preferred
Databricks Certified Apache Spark Developer Associate
Databricks Certified Data Engineer Associate or Professional
AWS Certified Developer Associate
AWS Certified Data Engineer Associate
AWS Certified Solution Architect Associate
Benefits
Health and welfare benefits coverage options including medical, dental, vision, spending accounts, life insurance, voluntary plans, as well as participation in a 401(k) plan.
Company
ALTA IT Services, LLC
ALTA IT Services, LLC combines experience and expertise to deliver IT talent that meets and exceeds the expectations of our clients.
201-500 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Growth StageTotal Funding
unknown2015-12-18Acquired
Leadership Team
Bonnie Wells
Senior Business Development Manager - Strategic Staffing Partner
Company data provided by crunchbase