#138807 - Senior Data Platform Engineer

Lifted, an Upwork Company™; Jeeta; Remote; EUR 83,000 - 124,000; Full time

Job summary

Lifted, an Upwork Company™, seeks a Senior Data Platform Engineer to modernize and migrate a large-scale data platform on AWS. You will manage Snowflake, Confluent/Kafka, and related tooling across development, staging, and production.

The role emphasizes hands-on engineering, platform DevOps, and secure, auditable change management with Terraform, GitLab, and monitoring.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of senior-level, hands-on production data-platform engineering with platform/DevOps focus.
• Strong Python, Bash, and SQL skills.
• Production experience with Snowflake, Confluent/Kafka, and AWS in depth profiles.

Responsibilities

• Migrate data-platform workloads from legacy to modern AWS-based infra.
• Support connectivity and prerequisites for workloads moving to AWS us-east-2.
• Enable secure, governed data access for platform consumers and downstream systems.
• Modernize data-platform architecture, tooling, and operational practices.
• Operate and migrate Snowflake, Confluent/Kafka, AWS infra across dev, stage, prod.
• Triage production issues and contribute to runbooks and incident response.
• Deliver auditable infrastructure changes with IaC, GitLab, monitoring.

Skills

Python

Bash

SQL

Snowflake

Confluent/Kafka

AWS

Terraform

GitLab

Monitoring

Tools

Terraform

GitLab

Monitoring

Job description

We are seeking a hands‑on Senior Data Platform Engineer to support the modernization, migration, and reliability of a large-scale production data platform. This role combines data engineering with platform and DevOps operations across Snowflake, Confluent/Kafka, and AWS.

Enterprise experience strongly preferred.

Job Description

Key Responsibilities

• Migrate data-platform infrastructure and workloads from legacy environments to modern AWS-based infrastructure.
• Support connectivity, deployment, and operational prerequisites for workloads moving to AWS us-east-2.
• Enable secure and governed access to data for platform consumers and downstream systems.
• Modernize data-platform architecture, tooling, orchestration, storage, and operational practices.
• Operate and migrate Snowflake, Confluent/Kafka, AWS, and related data-platform infrastructure across development, stage, and production environments.
• Troubleshoot production issues and participate in incident response, testing, documentation, and runbook creation.
• Deliver repeatable and auditable infrastructure changes using Terraform or comparable infrastructure-as-code practices, GitLab, monitoring, and documented change processes.
• Coordinate migration work and technical dependencies across platform, data, and consuming teams.

Qualifications

Must-Have Skills

• 3+ years of senior-level, hands‑on production data‑platform engineering experience with a platform or DevOps orientation and strong data experience.
• Strong Python, Bash, and SQL skills.
• Production experience with Snowflake, Confluent/Kafka, and AWS through one of two accepted depth profiles: Deep Snowflake and AWS experience with working Kafka knowledge, including topics, connectors, and schemas; or Deep Kafka/Confluent and AWS experience with working Snowflake knowledge.
• Experience operating or migrating production systems across development, stage, and production environments.
• Strong production troubleshooting, incident‑response, testing, documentation, and cross‑team communication skills.
• Experience with least‑privilege access, change control, secrets handling, and secure operational practices.
• Hands‑on experience using Terraform or infrastructure as code, GitLab, and monitoring to deliver repeatable and auditable changes.

Nice‑to‑Have Skills

• Apache Spark and Hadoop, Hive, or HQL experience, including modernization or migration of legacy workloads.
• Snowpark, alternatives to dbt, AWS Glue, Monte Carlo, or other data‑quality and catalog tools.
• Experience migrating legacy Airflow, Hadoop, or Hive workloads to cloud‑native or managed platforms.
• Experience aligning systems and operating practices during a company migration or acquisition.
• Familiarity with Snowflake‑to‑Iceberg or Snowflake‑to‑data‑lake migration patterns.

Required Tools & Platforms

• Python, Bash, and SQL.
• Snowflake.
• Confluent and Apache Kafka, including topics, connectors, and schemas.
• AWS, including production migration and operations.
• Terraform or comparable infrastructure‑as‑code tooling.
• GitLab.
• Production monitoring and incident‑response tooling.

Location, Time & Engagement

• Candidates must be based in an eligible EMEA country approved for sourcing.
• Full U.S. Central Standard Time coverage (UTC-6) is required.
• Remote contract engagement for 45 hours per week.
• This is not currently a contract‑to‑hire opportunity.
• The successful candidate will use a client‑provisioned AWS WorkSpace.