Lead Data Engineer — Azure Databricks, PySpark & Spark

Cognizant; Las Vegas (NV); On-site; USD 120,000 - 135,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical/Dental/Vision/Life Insurance

Paid holidays + Paid Time Off

401(k) plan and contributions

Long-term/Short-term Disability

Paid Parental Leave

Employee Stock Purchase Plan

Job summary

Cognizant is seeking a hands-on Lead Data Engineer to design and deliver scalable data pipelines on Azure Databricks and Spark. You will lead end-to-end data engineering efforts, optimize workloads, and ensure high data quality across sources.

You'll mentor engineers, establish best practices, and collaborate with architects and product teams to turn data into actionable insights. This role offers a challenging, impact-driven environment with competitive compensation.

Qualifications

• Strong hands-on experience with Azure Databricks (5+ years) required.
• Deep expertise in Spark, PySpark, Python, and SQL.
• Experience building large-scale ETL/ELT data pipelines.
• Understanding of data modeling and distributed data processing.
• Experience with performance tuning and Databricks cluster optimization.
• Knowledge of Delta Lake, ADLS, ADF, Unity Catalog, CI/CD, and Azure DevOps is a plus.
• Strong communication and leadership to mentor teams.

Responsibilities

• Design and build scalable data pipelines using Azure Databricks, Spark, and PySpark.
• Lead end-to-end data engineering solutions from design through production.
• Optimize Spark workloads, clusters, and jobs for performance, reliability, and cost.
• Integrate data from multiple sources into trusted, analytics-ready datasets.
• Build strong data quality, monitoring, and validation into every pipeline.
• Establish coding standards, reusable frameworks, and engineering best practices.
• Partner with architects, product teams, and business stakeholders to solve real-world data challenges.
• Mentor engineers through design reviews, code reviews, and technical guidance.
• Explore new Databricks and Spark capabilities and bring the best ideas into production.

Skills

Azure Databricks

Spark

PySpark

Python

SQL

ETL/ELT pipelines

data modeling

distributed data processing

data quality

monitoring

CI/CD

Azure DevOps

Education

Bachelor's degree in a related field

Tools

Delta Lake

ADLS

ADF

Unity Catalog

Job description

Cognizant is seeking a hands-on Lead Data Engineer to design and deliver scalable data pipelines on Azure Databricks and Spark. You will lead end-to-end data engineering efforts, optimize workloads, and ensure high data quality across sources.

You'll mentor engineers, establish best practices, and collaborate with architects and product teams to turn data into actionable insights. This role offers a challenging, impact-driven environment with competitive compensation.