Lead Software Engineer - Databricks/Spark/AWS

JPMorgan Chase & Co.; Kentucky; On-site; USD 130,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is looking for a Lead Software Engineer to enhance and deliver market-leading technology products within their Corporate Sector. The role requires extensive experience in software/data engineering, with a focus on building high-throughput data pipelines using Databricks and Apache Spark.

The ideal candidate will lead architecture efforts, enforce data quality governance, and implement CI/CD strategies. Strong proficiency in Python and/or Java is essential, along with hands-on experience with AWS services. The position is based in Kentucky.

Qualifications

• 5+ years applied experience in software engineering.
• 10+ years of professional software/data engineering experience.
• Strong proficiency in Python and/or Java for automation.
• Hands-on Databricks expertise, including Delta Lake.

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture and delivery of high-throughput data pipelines.
• Design secure data ingestion and transformation frameworks.
• Build reusable libraries and frameworks in Python/Java.
• Implement CI/CD for data projects and champion engineering standards.

Skills

Software engineering concepts

Databricks

Apache Spark

Python

Java

AWS

Git

CI/CD

Education

Formal training or certification in software engineering

Tools

Terraform

Kinesis

Glue

CloudWatch

Job description

This is your chance to change the path of your career and guide multiple teams to success at one of the world's leading financial institutions.

As a Lead Software Engineer at JPMorgan Chase within Corporate Sector, Chief Technology Office, youare an integral part of an agile team that works to enhance, build, and deliver trusted market‑leading technology products in a secure, stable, and scalable way. As a core technical contributor, you are responsible for conducting critical technology solutions across multiple technical areas within various business functions in support of the firm’s business objectives.

Job Responsibilities:

• Lead architecture and delivery of high-throughput, low-latency data pipelines using Databricks and Apache Spark (Core, SQL, Structured Streaming).
• Establish lakehouse patterns with Delta Lake (ACID transactions, schema evolution, time travel, Z‑ordering, compaction) and ensure performance at scale.
• Drives team adoption of enterprise-authorized AI‑assisted engineering practices within the work environment to improve code quality, delivery speed, and operational outcomes (e.g., AI‑assisted code review/refactoring, test strategy acceleration, incident/root‑cause analysis support), while establishing consistent validation standards (secure coding, peer review, automated testing) and promoting reuse of effective patterns across the team.
• Applies knowledge of tools within the Software Development Life Cycle toolchain, including enterprise-authorized AI‑assisted development and automation capabilities, to improve the value realized by automation.
• Own Databricks cluster strategy and setup: runtime selection, autoscaling, driver/executor sizing, Spark configs, unit scripts, cluster policies, pools, and instance profiles.
• Orchestrate jobs with Databricks Workflows; integrate with AWS eventing and orchestration as needed.
• Design secure data ingestion and transformation frameworks leveraging AWS services:
  • S3 for data lake storage and lifecycle management
  • Glue for catalog/metadata and ETL jobs
  • IAM and Secrets Manager for role‑based access and credential management
  • CloudWatch for logging, metrics, and alerting
  • Lambda for serverless utilities
  • Kinesis and/or Kafka/MSK for streaming ingestion
• Enforce data quality, lineage, and governance using Unity Catalog and/or Glue Catalog; embed expectations and validation into pipelines.
• Drive Spark performance engineering: partitioning strategies, file sizing, AQE, broadcast joins, shuffle tuning, caching, spill/memory control, and job right‑sizing to optimize cost.
• Build reusable libraries, frameworks, and APIs in Python and/or Java; oversee unit, integration, and data validation testing.
• Implement CI/CD for data projects (Git‑based workflows), Terraform Infrastructure deployments environment promotion, and automated deployments; champion engineering standards and code reviews.

Required qualifications, capabilities, and skills:

• Formal training or certification on software engineering concepts and 5+ years applied experience.
• 10+ years of professional software/data engineering experience, including substantial production work with Spark on Databricks or EMR.
• Demonstrated experience leading effective use of approved AI‑assisted software development tools (e.g., for coding, code review, test acceleration, troubleshooting) with the ability to set team expectations for validating AI outputs for correctness, performance, and security.
• Strong understanding of responsible AI use in engineering workflows, including data sensitivity considerations, secure handling of inputs/outputs, and adherence to resiliency and security expectations; experience coaching engineers on safe, compliant adoption within delivery practices
• Strong proficiency in Python and/or Java for data processing, platform tooling, and automation.
• Hands‑on Databricks expertise (Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Workflows, Repos/notebooks, SQL Warehouses).
• Solid AWS experience: S3, IAM, Glue, CloudWatch, Kinesis / MSK, DynamoDB
• Proven track record architecting and operating ETL/ELT pipelines (batch and streaming), with schema design/evolution, SLAs, and reliability engineering.
• Deep skills in Spark performance tuning and Databricks cluster setup/optimization.
• Strong SQL and analytics data modeling (dimensional/star schema; lakehouse best practices).
• CI/CD and automation tooling for data (Git workflows, artifact management) and testing frameworks (pytest, JUnit).
• Security‑first mindset: roles/instance profiles, secret management, encryption‑at‑rest/in‑transit, and network controls.

Preferred qualifications, capabilities, and skills:

• Experience with Delta Live Tables and advanced governance (catalogs, grants, auditing) in Databricks.
• AWS networking knowledge (VPC, subnets, routing, security groups) and data egress controls.
• Experience with Terraform for Infra deployments
• Cost optimization experience: autoscaling strategies, spot vs on‑demand, auto‑termination, storage layouts and compaction.
• Familiarity with Kafka/MSK or Kinesis Data Streams/Firehose for real‑time ingestion.
• Observability for data systems (freshness/completeness metrics, lineage, SLAs, alerting).
• Demonstrated leadership in code quality, reviews, testing strategy, CI/CD, and technical mentorship; excellent communication with stakeholders.