Databricks Administrator

Databricks Administrator

Location: Washington, DC — fully onsite; telework is not available.
Assignment: Six-month contract with possible extension.
Schedule: Standard business hours; overtime is not expected.

Our corporate client is seeking an experienced Databricks Administrator to help build, secure, and optimize a Lakehouse platform supporting data engineering, analytics, machine learning, and AI. You will work with engineering, data science, analytics, and infrastructure teams as a technical expert, solving complex production challenges and helping teams get the most from Databricks.

What you will do

• Design and optimize Databricks solutions using Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, Databricks SQL, Workflows, Jobs, and Mosaic AI.
• Build scalable ingestion, transformation, and orchestration pipelines with Spark, Delta Live Tables, and Auto Loader.
• Tune Spark jobs, clusters, and SQL queries; improve performance, autoscaling, resource utilization, and cost efficiency.
• Implement Unity Catalog governance, access controls, security standards, and compliance practices.
• Support ML and generative AI workloads using MLflow, Feature Store, Vector Search, and Mosaic AI.
• Troubleshoot production issues, perform root-cause analysis, and implement monitoring, logging, and alerts.
• Integrate Databricks with cloud platforms, ETL, BI, catalog, and orchestration tools.
• Automate deployment and platform management, document best practices, and mentor technical teams.

What you bring

• 7+ years in data engineering or architecture, including at least 4 years focused on Databricks.
• Hands-on Unity Catalog implementation experience, including row- and column-level security and governance across workspaces.
• Advanced Spark performance tuning, including data skew, shuffles, Adaptive Query Execution, caching, and Photon.
• Production experience building generative AI or LLM applications with Mosaic AI, Vector Search, and MLflow.
• Advanced Python, Scala, and SQL skills for distributed computing.
• Infrastructure as Code experience, such as Terraform, to manage Databricks workspaces, clusters, and permissions.
• Secure networking experience with Private Link or VPC peering, customer-managed encryption keys, and IP access lists.
• CI/CD experience with GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, or GitLab, using Databricks Asset Bundles or the Databricks CLI.
• A bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Data Management, or a related field, or equivalent relevant work experience.
• U.S. citizenship is required. Public Trust approval is required before starting; candidates with an active Public Trust are preferred.
• Ability to work fully onsite in Washington, DC.

Preferred qualifications

• Databricks certifications in solutions architecture, professional data engineering, or professional machine learning.
• AWS or Azure architecture certification.

Interview process: Phone or video interview.