Lead Fabric Data Engineer

Xceltium; Sydney; Hybrid; AUD 130,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Xceltium is seeking an experienced Data Fabric Engineer to lead the Microsoft Fabric initiative in Sydney. You will define the technical approach, design Lakehouse and Warehouse structures, and build robust ingestion and transformation pipelines.

This 12-month FTC offers hybrid working from Sydney CBD, with a clear path to hands-on impact, security governance, and cost-aware operations across Azure, Data Factory, SQL, Python/Spark.

Qualifications

• Experience building Microsoft Fabric environments.
• Design Fabric architecture, Lakehouse and Warehouse structures.
• Strong data ingestion, transformation and pipeline capability.
• SQL data modelling expertise.
• Experience with Python and/or Spark.
• Understanding of security, governance and data quality.
• Exposure to Azure and modern deployment practices including Git and CI/CD.
• Ability to translate complex source systems into practical technical designs.

Responsibilities

• Define the technical approach across the Fabric environment end-to-end.
• Design Lakehouse/Warehouse structures and engineering patterns.
• Build ingestion and transformation pipelines with reliable, cost-aware operation.
• Ensure security, governance, and data quality across workloads.
• Collaborate with leadership and translate requirements into designs for the platform.

Skills

Microsoft Fabric

Fabric architecture

Lakehouse/Warehouse

Ingestion & ETL pipelines

SQL data modelling

Python / Spark

Security & governance

Azure cloud

CI/CD practices

Tools

Git

Azure

Job description

Most Data Engineers join an established platform and work within decisions somebody else has already made.

This is an opportunity to make those decisions yourself.

Our client is a major consumer organisation operating at significant scale across Australia and New Zealand.

Technology is delivered through a centralised team where people are given broader ownership than they might experience in a larger enterprise. It combines the scale and complexity of a major consumer business with a collaborative, down-to-earth culture and fewer of the functional silos often found in organisations of this size.

The business is now investing in a new Microsoft Fabric capability to improve how data is structured, governed and used.

The Opportunity

The technology has been selected. The architecture and engineering approach have not.

What the organisation needs now is an experienced Data / Fabric Engineer who can bring the Fabric expertise and turn that direction into the right technical solution.

You’ll establish the technical approach across the environment, including designing Lakehouse and Warehouse structures, building ingestion and transformation pipelines, curating and modelling data, establishing security and access controls, and ensuring workloads operate reliably, efficiently and at the right cost.

You’ll work across Microsoft Fabric, OneLake, Data Factory, SQL and notebooks, with Python and/or Spark, Power BI, Azure, security, governance and modern CI/CD practices forming part of the broader environment.

There are experienced people internally who understand the existing systems, schemas and business processes. They’ll bring that context. You’ll bring the Fabric expertise.

There will be checkpoints with technology leadership, but not every decision will be prescribed. You’ll be expected to form an informed technical view, bring forward ideas and challenge assumptions where you see a better approach.

The Data Challenge

Years of transactional, customer, finance and operational information sit across multiple systems and schemas, with historical reporting approaches creating complexity and technical debt.

Your challenge is to bring that information together into a more deliberate and scalable data environment.

The goal is to establish repeatable patterns where information can be ingested, transformed, secured and curated before being made consistently available for downstream analytics and reporting.

Beyond improving access to trusted data today, the platform will also create a stronger foundation for the organisation’s longer-term ambitions around AI.

What You’ll Bring

We’re looking for someone who has already built or materially shaped a Microsoft Fabric environment rather than only worked within one established before they arrived.

You’ll ideally bring:

• Strong hands-on Microsoft Fabric engineering experience
• Experience designing Fabric architecture, Lakehouse/Warehouse structures and engineering patterns
• Strong data ingestion, transformation, ELT/ETL and pipeline capability
• SQL and data modelling expertise
• Experience with Python and/or Spark
• Understanding of security, governance, access controls and data quality
• Exposure to Azure and modern deployment practices including Git and CI/CD
• The ability to understand complex source systems and translate requirements into practical technical designs

You don’t need expert-level depth across every individual Fabric component.

What matters is meaningful Fabric experience and strong cloud data engineering foundations, with the breadth to operate effectively across the environment.

Why Consider a 12-Month FTC?

For an experienced Fabric Engineer, the value isn’t simply another 12 months working with the technology.

It’s the opportunity to take a Fabric environment from early-stage design through engineering, governance and operationalisation, with genuine accountability for the outcome.

Rather than contributing to one part of an established platform, you’ll gain end-to-end experience establishing one, working through complex source data and making technical decisions that influence how the environment develops.

By the end of the engagement, you’ll have something tangible to show for it: a reliable Fabric environment, priority data sources flowing through the platform, appropriate controls embedded and knowledge transferred internally.

For the right engineer, it’s a substantial piece of work you can point to and say: I built that.

Working Arrangements

This is a 12-month fixed-term contract based in Sydney CBD, with hybrid working available.