Platform Engineer

Zoolatech; Town of Poland (NY); On-site; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Pandora is seeking a Senior Platform Engineer to design, provision, and harden data storage and governance infrastructure that accelerates our data strategy. You will enable D&A teams to onboard data sources quickly and ensure consistent domain definitions, building infrastructure that other engineers trust and can build on without redirection.

This is a high-impact, independent contractor role requiring strong Python/Shell automation, architectural influence, and collaboration with ingestion

Qualifications

• 5+ years as Platform/DevOps/SRE supporting cloud data platforms.
• Deep hands-on with Unity Catalog administration.
• Extensive Terraform / IaC experience at scale.
• Experience with Azure cloud services.

Responsibilities

• Design, provision, and evolve data storage and governance infra across environments.
• Own Unity Catalog metastore config, workspace binding, and access policies.
• Build platform-wide monitoring, observability, and alerting for both layers.
• Automate environment provisioning and configuration for new source connections.
• Partner with ingestion pipelines and domain model engineers to keep pace.
• Mentor engineers and contribute to architecture discussions.
• Drive CI/CD, IaC, automated testing, and DevOps practices.

Skills

Platform Engineering

DevOps

SRE

CI/CD

Python

Shell scripting

Infrastructure as Code

Azure

Communication

Mentoring

Tools

Unity Catalog

Terraform

Azure

Job description

Pandora reaches millions of people across more than 100 countries, and every one of those touchpoints depends on data flowing cleanly from source systems into a governed, trusted foundation. In Pandora, the data foundation is a culmination of collaboration between the Data & Analytics (D&A) department and the Foundation Platforms department.

As a Senior Platform Engineer, you will not build the processing pipelines or design the domain data models yourself. That work belongs to the D&A engineers building on top of what you provide. Your job is to design, provision, and harden the data storage and governance infrastructure that accelerates Pandora’s new data strategy.

What you do ensures D&A teams onboard data sources in days or weeks, and keeps domain definitions consistent, without every team reinventing its own plumbing. This is a high-impact, high-ownership role for an engineer who takes pride in building infrastructure that other engineers can trust and build on without thinking twice.

Responsibilities

• Design, provision, and evolve the data storage and governance infrastructure that D&A’s Ingestion Layer and Domain Layer are built on, as code, across environments.
• Own operational administration of Unity Catalog for both layers: metastore configuration, workspace binding, and access policies that let source data flow into ingestion and domain layer teams reliably.
• Build platform-wide monitoring, observability, and alerting for both layers — job health, freshness, access anomalies, capacity — so issues are caught before they reach the Accelerator layer teams downstream.
• Automate environment provisioning and configuration so new source connections and domain workspaces can be stood up predictably and safely, without manual setup each time.
• Partner with the engineers building ingestion pipelines and domain models to understand what they need from the platform, and make sure the infrastructure keeps up with it.
• Act as a technical reference point on infrastructure architecture for both layers: contribute to design discussions, raise engineering standards, and mentor engineers building on the platform.
• Drive engineering excellence through CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, automated testing, and DevOps practices.

Skills Required

• · 5+ years of experience as a Platform Engineer, DevOps Engineer, SRE, or Infrastructure Engineer supporting cloud data platforms.
• · Deep hands-on knowledge and experience administering Unity Catalog
• · Strong hands‑on experience with Terraform or comparable Infrastructure as Code tooling, applied at platform scale.
• · Experience with Azure cloud services
• · Strong software engineering fundamentals, including clean code, testability, modularity, and version control.
• · Experience building and operating CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure and platform tooling.
• · Experience implementing monitoring, observability, and alerting for distributed or cloud systems.
• · Proficiency in Python and/or Shell scripting for automation.
• · Ability to contribute to architectural discussions and influence technical direction, not just execute on it.
• · Experience mentoring peers or leading technical work within a team.
• · Strong communication skills and the ability to engage confidently with both technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
• · Fluent English, written and spoken.

Nice to have

• We do not expect all of these, but experience in any of the following would be a bonus:
• · Apache Kafka
• · OpenMetadata or comparable data catalogs
• · Change Data Capture (CDC)
• · Kubernetes or container orchestration

Engagement Model: Direct Independent Contractor (Please read carefully)

This is an independent contractor opportunity based on a direct contractual relationship between Zoolatech and the individual service provider.

To facilitate this direct partnership, we engage with professionals who are registered and operate as a sole proprietorship, private entrepreneur, or an equivalent self‑employment status in your country.

Please note, our model does not accommodate contracts through third‑party intermediaries such as agencies, incubators, or umbrella companies. The essential requirement is your ability to enter into a service agreement and invoice Zoolatech directly. This is not an offer of direct employment

Please note that only candidates whose profiles closely match our requirements will be contacted.