Senior Data Specialist

McKesson’s Corporate; Mississauga; On-site; CAD 139,000 - 185,000; Full time

Job summary

McKesson in Mississauga, Ontario, seeks a Senior Data Specialist to design and optimize cloud-native data pipelines on Azure Databricks, enabling analytics, AI/ML, and trusted data products across the enterprise. You will architect lakehouse patterns while ensuring data quality, security, and governance in a regulated healthcare context.

The ideal candidate brings hands-on Databricks, PySpark, SQL, ADF, ADLS Gen2, Delta Lake, DLT, CDC, and Medallion Architecture experience, plus strong data

Qualifications

• Expert-level experience designing, building and supporting enterprise-grade data solutions on Azure Databricks.
• Strong skills in PySpark and SQL for large-scale data processing and optimization.
• Experience with CI/CD, source control, automated testing, and production deployment.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and optimize large-scale data pipelines using Azure Databricks, PySpark, and SQL.
• Develop and maintain batch and near real-time data ingestion with ADF, Delta Lake, and CDC.
• Build and support Lakehouse solutions using Bronze-Silver-Gold medallion architecture.
• Create Delta Live Tables pipelines to improve data quality and reliability.
• Lead data engineering initiatives, review code, and mentor junior engineers.

Skills

Databricks

PySpark

SQL

CI/CD

Education

Bachelor's degree

Master's degree (preferred)

Tools

Azure Data Factory

Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2

Delta Lake

Delta Live Tables

CDC

Medallion Architecture

Job description

McKesson is an impact-driven, Fortune 10 company that touches virtually every aspect of healthcare. We are known for delivering insights, products, and services that make quality care more accessible and affordable. Here, we focus on the health, happiness, and well-being of you and those we serve – we care. What you do at McKesson matters. We foster a culture where you can grow, make an impact, and are empowered to bring new ideas. Together, we thrive as we shape the future of health for patients, our communities, and our people. If you want to be part of tomorrow’s health today, we want to hear from you.

Position Summary

The Senior Data Specialist provides technical leadership in designing, developing, and optimizing cloud-native data solutions on the Azure Data platform, with a primary focus on Azure Databricks. This role is responsible for building enterprise-scale data pipelines, implementing modern lakehouse architectures, and enabling trusted, high-quality data products that support analytics, AI/ML, and business decision-making. The ideal candidate brings deep hands-on experience with Databricks, PySpark, advanced SQL, Azure Data Factory (ADF), Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS), Delta Lake, Delta Live Tables (DLT), and Change Data Capture (CDC) frameworks. This individual will play a key role in designing and supporting robust Medallion Architecture patterns while ensuring data quality, performance, security, and governance across the enterprise. Working closely with architects, product teams, analytics stakeholders, and governance teams, the Senior Data Specialist will deliver scalable, reusable, and production-ready data engineering solutions in a highly regulated environment.

Key Responsibilities

Azure Databricks & Data Engineering

• Design, build, and optimize large-scale data pipelines using Azure Databricks, PySpark, and advanced SQL.
• Develop and maintain batch and near real-time data ingestion frameworks using Azure Data Factory (ADF), Delta Lake, and CDC methodologies.
• Build and support modern Lakehouse solutions leveraging Medallion Architecture (Bronze, Silver, Gold layers).
• Design and implement Delta Live Tables (DLT) pipelines to improve reliability, maintainability, and data quality.
• Develop highly scalable and resilient ETL/ELT frameworks that process high-volume enterprise datasets.
• Optimize Spark workloads, partitioning strategies, job orchestration, and SQL performance for large-scale processing environments.
• Implement robust monitoring, alerting, troubleshooting, and performance-tuning practices across data pipelines.

Data Quality & Governance

• Establish and maintain data quality validation frameworks, lineage tracking, metadata management, and governance controls.
• Implement automated testing and reconciliation processes to ensure data accuracy, completeness and consistency.
• Support regulatory, security, and compliance requirements through documented controls and audit-ready processes.

Solution Delivery & Leadership

• Collaborate with architects and stakeholders to translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions.
• Drive engineering best practices, code reviews, CI/CD adoption, and reusable framework development.
• Mentor junior engineers and provide technical leadership on Databricks and Azure-based implementations.
• Evaluate emerging Azure and Databricks capabilities and recommend enhancements to improve platform performance and operational efficiency.

Minimum Qualifications (Knowledge, Skills & Abilities)

• Expert-level hands-on Azure Databricks experience designing, building, and supporting enterprise-grade data solutions.
• Strong expertise in PySpark and advanced SQL for large-scale data processing and optimization.
• Extensive experience with:
  • Azure Data Factory (ADF)
  • Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS Gen2)
  • Delta Lake
  • Delta Live Tables (DLT)
  • Change Data Capture (CDC)
  • Medallion Architecture
• Deep understanding of Spark architecture, job optimization, partitioning strategies, and performance tuning.
• Experience architecting and supporting end-to-end ETL/ELT pipelines in cloud-native environments.
• Strong knowledge of data modeling, data warehousing, metadata management, and governance best practices.
• Experience implementing CI/CD, source control, automated testing, and production deployment processes.
• Ability to troubleshoot complex pipeline failures, data quality issues, performance bottlenecks, and integration challenges.

Preferred Technical Skills

• Experience with Snowflake and modern cloud data ecosystems.
• Experience with Kafka, streaming architectures, and event-driven data processing.
• Exposure to AI/ML enablement and advanced analytics workloads within Databricks.
• Azure certifications and Databricks certifications are highly preferred.

Business Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related discipline; Master’s degree preferred.
• 7+ years of experience in data engineering and enterprise data platform development.
• 3+ years of deep hands-on Azure Databricks engineering experience in production environments.
• Proven track record building and supporting enterprise-scale data pipelines and Lakehouse implementations.
• Experience working with large volumes of structured and semi-structured data.
• Healthcare, pharmaceutical, life sciences, or other regulated industry experience strongly preferred.

Working Conditions

• Flex & Connect model requiring 2 days per week in office.

We are proud to offer a competitive compensation package at McKesson as part of our Total Rewards. This is determined by several factors, including performance, experience and skills, equity, regular job market evaluations, and geographical markets. The pay range shown below is aligned with McKesson's pay philosophy, and pay will always be compliant with any applicable regulations. In addition to base pay, other compensation, such as an annual bonus or long-term incentive opportunities may be offered.

Our Base Pay Range for this position $99,100 - $132,100

In addition to base pay, other compensation, such as an annual bonus or long-term incentive opportunities may be offered.

McKesson is an Equal Opportunity Employer

McKesson provides equal employment opportunities to applicants and employees, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, age, genetic information, or any other legally protected category. For additional information on McKesson’s full Equal Employment Opportunity policies, visit our Equal Employment Opportunity page.

McKesson is committed to being an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer and offers opportunities to all job seekers including job seekers with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation to assist with your job search or application for employment, please contact us by sending an email to (United States) [e-mail] or (Canada) [e-mail]. Resumes or CVs submitted to this email box will not be accepted.