Big Data Developer

Galent; Toronto; On-site; CAD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Galent in Toronto is seeking a Senior Backend Developer to design, build, and maintain scalable data pipelines and backend systems in an enterprise environment. You will lead Spark-Scala projects on Hadoop/CDP clusters, optimize ETL pipelines, and migrate Spark 2 apps to Spark 3 while ensuring data governance and security.

The role requires 5+ years of experience in big data engineering, API integration, and AI-assisted development, with hands-on work on Spark, Hive, HDFS, and CI/CD tooling.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of backend or data engineering experience in enterprise environments.
• Hands-on with Spark, Hadoop, and data lake ecosystems.
• Experience migrating Spark 2 to Spark 3 and building scalable ETL pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop Spark-Scala apps for large-scale data processing on Hadoop/CDP clusters.
• Build and optimize ETL/ELT pipelines using Spark DataFrames, Datasets and Spark SQL.
• Tune Spark jobs for performance (partitioning, caching, broadcast joins, shuffle optimization).
• Migrate Spark 2 apps to Spark 3 on Cloudera CDP platforms.
• Work with Parquet, ORC, Avro on HDFS.
• Write complex HiveQL / Spark SQL queries with window functions, CTEs, subqueries and aggregations.
• Design and maintain Hive external/managed tables and partitioned datasets.
• Optimize slow-running queries and resolve correlated subquery issues.
• Work with HDFS encryption zones and data governance requirements.
• Develop and maintain bash scripts for job orchestration and automation.
• Handle error management, logging and alerting in shell scripts.
• Manage HDFS operations (hdfs dfs commands), file transfers, and data validation.
• Build scripts and pipelines to extract data from REST APIs using curl and Python.
• Parse and process JSON API responses and load into HDFS/Hive.
• Manage pagination, error handling and retry logic for API calls.
• Work with enterprise API gateways and URL parameter construction.
• Leverage GitHub Copilot / AI coding assistants to accelerate development.
• Use AI tools for code review, SQL generation, script debugging and documentation.
• Contribute to AI-assisted data quality and anomaly detection pipelines.
• Explore and implement LLM-based automation for repetitive data engineering tasks.

Skills

Big data engineering

API integration

AI-assisted development

Tools

Spark

Hadoop

Hive

HDFS

CDP

Spark SQL

Parquet/ORC/Avro

Job description

We are looking for a Senior Backend Developer with 5+ years of experience in big data engineering, API integration, and AI-assisted development. The ideal candidate will design, build, and maintain scalable data pipelines and backend systems in a enterprise environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and develop Spark-Scala applications for large-scale data processing on Hadoop/CDP clusters
• Build and optimize ETL/ELT pipelines using Spark DataFrames, Datasets and Spark SQL
• Tune Spark jobs for performance (partitioning, caching, broadcast joins, shuffle optimization)
• Migrate Spark 2 applications to Spark 3 on Cloudera CDP platforms
• Work with Parquet, ORC, Avro file formats on HDFS
• Write complex HiveQL / Spark SQL queries including window functions, CTEs, subqueries and aggregations
• Design and maintain Hive external/managed tables and partitioned datasets
• Optimize slow-running queries and resolve correlated subquery issues
• Work with HDFS encryption zones and data governance requirements

Unix / Shell Scripting

• Develop and maintain bash shell scripts for job orchestration and automation
• Handle error management, return codes, logging and alerting in shell scripts
• Manage HDFS operations (hdfs dfs commands), file transfers, and data validation

API Extraction & Integration

• Build scripts and pipelines to extract data from REST APIs using curl and Python
• Parse and process JSON API responses and load into HDFS/Hive
• Manage pagination, error handling and retry logic for API calls
• Work with enterprise API gateways and URL parameter construction
• Leverage GitHub Copilot / AI coding assistants to accelerate development
• Use AI tools for code review, SQL generation, script debugging and documentation
• Contribute to AI-assisted data quality and anomaly detection pipelines
• Explore and implement LLM-based automation for repetitive data engineering tasks

Scheduling & Orchestration

• Schedule and manage jobs using AAP (Ansible Automation Platform) / Control-M / cron
• Build and maintain Ansible playbooks for automated deployments
• Manage deployment pipelines including artifact versioning, Vault secret injection and environment-specific configuration
• Monitor job health, handle failures and implement alerting

Nice to Have

• Experience with Cloudera CDP (7.x) and migration from HDP
• Knowledge of Kerberos, Vault, HDFS encryption zones
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines (Helios, GitHub Actions)
• Experience with MSSQL / JDBC connectivity from Spark
• Understanding of AML / Financial regulatory data domains.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, or gender identity), national origin, citizenship status, age, disability, genetic information, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. https://www.e-verify.gov/sites/default/files/everify/posters/IER_RighttoWorkPoster.pdf