AWS Databricks Platform Administrator

ZipStaff Inc.; Raritan (NJ); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health Insurance

Dental Insurance

Vision Insurance

401(k) + 401(k) matching

Paid time off

Referral Program

Job summary

ZipStaff Inc. is seeking an experienced AWS Databricks Platform Administrator in Raritan, NJ on-site. The role owns platform reliability, governance, security, and cost optimization for enterprise analytics workloads.

Responsibilities include administering Databricks on AWS, enforcing standards, automating operations, and providing technical leadership while collaborating with data engineering, security, and cloud teams. Strong IaC, Terraform, and CI/CD expertise are required.

Qualifications

• 9+ years in cloud infrastructure, data platforms, DevOps, or production admin.
• 5+ years hands-on Databricks administration on AWS with enterprise deployments.
• Strong knowledge of AWS networking, security, storage, and IAM.
• Experience with IaC and automation using Terraform, Python, REST APIs, and CI/CD tools.
• Ability to work on-site in Raritan, NJ.

Responsibilities

• Administer Databricks accounts, workspaces, Unity Catalog, clusters, jobs, and access controls on AWS.
• Design scalable, secure Databricks platform architecture aligned to enterprise standards.
• Manage IAM roles, service principals, SCIM provisioning, and SSO.
• Implement Unity Catalog governance, including privileges and auditability.
• Monitor health, performance, capacity, and resolve bottlenecks; drive FinOps.
• Automate provisioning and policy enforcement with Terraform and Databricks tooling.
• Lead incident, change, and release management; coordinate with support teams.

Skills

Databricks administration

AWS cloud

Terraform

Python

CI/CD pipelines

Security & IAM

FinOps & cost management

Incident management

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science / IT / Engineering

Tools

Databricks CLI/SDK

AWS CLI

Terraform

CI/CD tools

Unity Catalog / Delta Lake

Job description

Job Title: AWS Databricks Platform Administrator

Location: Raritan, NJ (On-site)

Employment Type: Contract (W2 through ZipStaff — No C2C or 1099)

About the Opportunity:

ZipStaff is seeking an experienced AWS Databricks Platform Administrator to own platform reliability, governance, security, cost management, and operational excellence for a global technology services firm.

This senior role requires substantial hands‑on expertise administering, securing, optimizing, and supporting Databricks on AWS for enterprise data and analytics workloads. You will design scalable platform architecture, enforce standards, automate operations, and provide technical leadership while partnering with data engineering, analytics, security, and cloud teams.

What You’ll Do:

• Administer and support Databricks accounts, workspaces, Unity Catalog, metastores, clusters, SQL warehouses, jobs, instance pools, repositories, libraries, secrets, and access controls on AWS.
• Design and maintain secure, scalable, and highly available Databricks platform architecture aligned with enterprise cloud standards.
• Manage identity and access through IAM roles and policies, service principals, single sign-on, SCIM provisioning, and role-based access control.
• Implement data governance using Unity Catalog including catalogs, schemas, external locations, storage credentials, privileges, lineage, and auditability.
• Configure and troubleshoot AWS integrations such as S3, IAM, VPC, PrivateLink, KMS, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, Route 53, and Secrets Manager.
• Establish cluster policies, approved runtime standards, library controls, tagging, auto-termination, serverless usage guidelines, and workload isolation.
• Monitor platform health, performance, job reliability, capacity, and usage; proactively identify and resolve bottlenecks and recurring issues.
• Drive FinOps practices by analyzing DBU and AWS consumption, enforcing tagging and budgets, optimizing compute configurations, and reducing idle or inefficient resources.
• Automate workspace provisioning, configuration, policy enforcement, and operational tasks using Terraform, Databricks Asset Bundles, Databricks CLI/SDK, Python, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Lead incident, problem, change, release, vulnerability, and service-request management while meeting agreed SLAs and operational KPIs.
• Plan and execute runtime upgrades, platform migrations, disaster-recovery tests, backup validation, and business‑continuity activities.
• Partner with data engineering, analytics, security, networking, cloud engineering, and application teams to onboard workloads and resolve complex technical issues.
• Maintain architecture diagrams, runbooks, standard operating procedures, support documentation, compliance evidence, and knowledge articles.
• Provide technical leadership, mentor administrators and engineers, conduct reviews, and define platform standards and product roadmaps.
• Coordinate with Databricks and AWS support teams for critical incidents, product defects, and service improvements.

Required Qualifications:

• 9+ years of overall experience in cloud infrastructure, data platforms, DevOps, platform engineering, or production administration.
• 5+ years of hands‑on Databricks administration experience, preferably with enterprise deployments on AWS.
• Strong experience with Databricks account console, workspace administration, Unity Catalog, cluster policies, SQL warehouses, jobs, Delta Lake, system tables, and audit logs.
• Strong knowledge of AWS networking, security, storage, encryption, monitoring, and identity services (VPC, S3, IAM, KMS, PrivateLink, CloudWatch, CloudTrail).
• Hands‑on experience with infrastructure as code and automation using Terraform, Python, shell scripting, REST APIs, Databricks CLI/SDK, and CI/CD tools.
• Proven experience supporting business‑critical platforms in production, including incident response, root‑cause analysis, change management, capacity planning, and SLA governance.
• Working knowledge of Linux administration, networking, DNS, firewalls, certificates, proxies, and secure connectivity patterns.
• Good understanding of Spark architecture, Delta Lake, workload performance, data lakehouse patterns, and troubleshooting distributed data workloads.
• Experience implementing security controls including least‑privilege access, secrets management, encryption, audit logging, vulnerability remediation, and compliance requirements.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent relevant experience.
• Ability to work on‑site in Raritan, NJ.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with Redshift or related AWS analytics services.
• Prior leadership mentoring administrators or defining platform standards and roadmaps.
• Background supporting large‑scale enterprise data and analytics platforms in a technology services environment.

Benefits:

• Health Insurance.
• Dental Insurance.
• Vision Insurance.
• 401(k) + 401(k) matching.
• Paid time off.
• Referral Program.

About ZipStaff:

ZipStaff partners with leading organizations to connect skilled technology professionals with high‑impact contract opportunities. We focus on quality matches, clear communication, and long‑term success for candidates and clients.