Databricks Solution Architect

Job Title: Databricks Solution Architect

Job Type: Contract to Hire

Work Mode: Remote

Pay Rate: $80/hr to Candidate

Job Description:

Job Summary:

We are seeking an experienced Databricks Solution Architect to lead the end-to-end architecture of a modern enterprise data platform. The ideal candidate will translate business requirements across Risk, Fraud, Finance, Marketing, Collections, and Product into scalable, secure, and cost-effective data solutions on Databricks.

The architect will own strategic architecture decisions and collaborate closely with engineering teams to define target-state architecture, migration roadmaps, security standards, and platform governance.

Key Responsibilities:

• Define the target-state data architecture on Databricks, including ingestion, medallion architecture, data serving, and ML integration.

• Lead discovery sessions with business and technology stakeholders and develop solution designs, reference architectures, and delivery roadmaps.

• Design marketing data solutions for identity resolution, customer segmentation, campaign measurement, attribution, and compliant data sharing.

• Architect collections data solutions for near-real-time delinquency data, contact information, vendor integrations, and regulatory compliance.

• Make architectural decisions regarding batch vs. streaming, build vs. buy, workspace topology, AWS networking, multi-account design, high availability, and disaster recovery.

• Define security and governance architecture using Unity Catalog, including PII/NPI protection, access controls, encryption, audit logging, and data lineage.

• Plan and execute migration strategies for legacy Hadoop, Hive, EMR, and enterprise data warehouse workloads.

• Develop cost and capacity models, including Databricks DBU forecasting, FinOps controls, and business cases for platform investments.

• Lead architecture review boards and maintain architecture standards, reference patterns, and decision records.

• Manage relationships with Databricks and cloud provider teams, including vendor evaluations and proof-of-concept initiatives.

Required Skills and Qualifications:

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

• 5+ years of hands-on experience with the Databricks Lakehouse Platform.

• Strong expertise in Apache Spark, Delta Lake, SQL, medallion architecture, and dimensional data modeling.

• Strong AWS architecture experience, including networking, IAM, encryption, and multi-account design.

• Experience designing secure data platforms for PII/NPI protection, Unity Catalog access controls, and data lineage.

• Proven experience planning migrations from legacy Hadoop, Hive, EMR, and enterprise data warehouse platforms.

• Strong knowledge of batch and streaming architectures, including Kafka and Spark Structured Streaming.

• Experience designing high-availability solutions and disaster recovery strategies.

• Experience with Databricks cost optimization, DBU forecasting, capacity planning, FinOps, and business case development.

• Excellent stakeholder management, vendor management, architecture documentation, and communication skills.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in banking, lending, financial services, or other regulated industries.

• Marketing data architecture experience, including Customer 360, consent management, segmentation, and campaign measurement.

• Collections data architecture experience involving delinquency, agency integrations, and dialer feeds.

• Experience with Databricks ML/MLOps architecture, MLflow, and feature stores.

• Databricks and AWS Solutions Architect certifications.