Cloud Architect Contractor: 10+ years (Expert)

Job Title: Senior Azure & Databricks Contractor — Insurance Data Platform Engagement

Type: Contract

Location: Remote

Job Description : 

Client is building a new data foundation for a major insurance client, covering Policy, Claims, and Rating data using a modern medallion lakehouse architecture.

This role will support both the platform build and client architecture discussions. The client currently uses a legacy Cloudera/Hadoop environment. The goal is to build a new platform that can work alongside the legacy environment without creating new dependencies.

Key Responsibilities

• Serve as the primary Azure and Databricks technical expert for the engagement.

• Own Databricks architecture decisions, including:

  • Workspace design

  • Unity Catalog governance strategy

  • Compute and cluster architecture

• Work with the client's Enterprise Data Architect and infrastructure team on architecture decisions.

• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to the offshore delivery team.

• Coordinate work between client architecture discussions and offshore engineering teams.

• Support the design and implementation of a medallion lakehouse architecture using modern open table formats.

• Help manage the transition from the legacy Cloudera environment to the new platform.

• Support evaluation and adoption of accelerator tools, including AI-assisted development tools and DBT for metric/data product development.

• Participate in client architecture review sessions and provide technical recommendations.

• Act as an escalation point for complex Azure and Databricks technical issues.

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in data engineering or architecture.

• 4-5+ years of hands-on experience with Azure and Databricks.

• Previous experience as a Databricks Architect designing enterprise-scale Databricks solutions.

• Strong hands-on experience with Azure data services:

  • ADLS Gen2

  • Azure Data Factory

  • Azure Synapse/Fabric

• Strong hands-on experience with Databricks:

  • Unity Catalog

  • Delta Lake

  • PySpark

  • Databricks Workflows

  • Managed Iceberg tables is a plus

• Experience designing and implementing enterprise-scale medallion/lakehouse architectures.

• Experience migrating from legacy Hadoop/Cloudera environments to cloud platforms.

• Strong communication skills with the ability to present and explain architecture recommendations to client stakeholders.

• Experience mentoring and leading distributed/offshore engineering teams.

• Ability to work independently and make technical decisions with limited supervision.

Preferred Qualifications

• Insurance/P&C domain experience, especially with policy administration systems.

• Experience with DBT for data product and metric development.

• Hands-on experience with Apache Iceberg.

• Knowledge of Claude Code and/or GitHub Copilot.

• Consulting or professional services delivery experience.

• Experience with data governance and catalog tools, including Unity Catalog.

• Current Databricks Architect-level or Professional-level certification.