Senior Data Platform Engineer

Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Pasadena (CA); On-site; USD 155,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in Pasadena, CA, seeks a Senior Data Platform Engineer to own the Databricks data platform end-to-end.

You will design and run workspaces, clusters, and Unity Catalog, while building Terraform-based infrastructure and data pipelines for enterprise analytics. You will collaborate with data scientists, engineers, and BI teams to deliver secure, governed data flowing into Genie dashboards, enabling self-service analytics.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, or related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of experience in data engineering or platform engineering roles, including hands-on Databricks administration.
• Proven experience managing Databricks infrastructure as code using Terraform.
• Strong proficiency in Python and SQL for building data pipelines.
• Experience designing data ingestion pipelines from APIs, SFTP, third-party feeds, and streaming sources.
• Working knowledge of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure) and data storage services.
• Experience supporting BI or natural-language dashboards (e.g., Databricks Genie).
• Ability to explain pipeline and dashboard design decisions to non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and manage Databricks environments (workspaces, clusters, Unity Catalog, SQL warehouses) for analytics workloads.
• Develop and maintain Terraform modules to provision and version-control Databricks infrastructure.
• Design and build data ingestion pipelines from internal and external sources into the lakehouse.
• Architect and maintain bronze/silver/gold data layers using Delta Lake with governance.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to design Genie dashboards and enable self-service analytics.
• Implement platform security, access controls, and data governance.
• Work with engineers to build CI/CD pipelines and IaC for the data platform.
• Document architecture, pipelines, and runbooks.
• Assist AI engineers with MCP connectors and data/tool integrations.

Skills

Databricks

Python

SQL

Terraform

Data governance

CI/CD

Delta Lake

Unity Catalog

APIs/SFTP

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Databricks

Terraform

GitHub Actions

Azure DevOps

GitLab CI

dbt

Job description

Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq ARWR) is a commercial stage biopharmaceutical company that develops medicines that treat intractable diseases by silencing the genes that cause them. Using a broad portfolio of RNA chemistries and efficient modes of delivery, Arrowhead therapies trigger the RNA interference mechanism to induce rapid, deep, and durable knockdown of target genes. RNA interference, or RNAi, is a mechanism present in living cells that inhibits the expression of a specific gene, thereby affecting the production of a specific protein. Arrowhead’s RNAi-based therapeutics leverage this natural pathway of gene silencing.

Arrowhead is focused on developing innovative drugs for diseases with a genetic basis, typically characterized by the overproduction of one or more proteins that are involved with disease. The depth and versatility of our RNAi technologies enables us to potentially address conditions in virtually any therapeutic area and pursue disease targets that are not otherwise addressable by small molecules and biologics. Arrowhead is leading the field in bringing the promise of RNAi to address diseases outside of the liver, and our clinical pipeline includes disease targets in the liver and lung with a promising pipeline of preclinical candidates.

Arrowhead’s corporate headquarters is in Pasadena, CA with research and development teams in Madison, WI & San Diego, CA, and a state of the art manufacturing facility in Verona, WI. Our employees are nimble, science-driven innovators who are collaborating to bring new therapies to patients in need.

The Position

The Senior Data Platform Engineer is responsible for designing, building, and managing the organization’s Databricks environments, with end-to-end ownership of the data platform’s infrastructure, security, and performance. This role leads the ingestion of data from internal systems and external third-party providers into the lakehouse, partners with business and analytics stakeholders to build and support Genie dashboards, and manages the Databricks platform (workspaces, clusters, Unity Catalog, jobs) as infrastructure-as-code using Terraform. The ideal candidate has hands‑on experience administering Databricks in production, writing Terraform for infrastructure changes, and building data pipelines that hold up at enterprise scale.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and manage Databricks environments (workspaces, clusters, Unity Catalog, SQL warehouses) supporting enterprise analytics and data science workloads
• Develop and maintain Terraform modules and pipelines to provision, configure, and version‑control all Databricks infrastructure and related cloud resources
• Design and build data ingestion pipelines to bring in data from internal systems and external third-party data providers (APIs, SFTP, batch files, streaming sources) into the lakehouse.
• Architect and maintain medallion (bronze/silver/gold) data layers using Delta Lake, ensuring data quality, lineage, and governance via Unity Catalog
• Partner with business and analytics end users to design, build, and support Genie dashboards and enable self‑service, natural‑language data exploration
• Implement platform security, access controls, and partner with data stewards.
• Work with data engineers, analysts, data scientists, AI engineers, and cloud DevOps engineers to build and maintain CI/CD pipelines, automated tests, and Terraform infrastructure‑as‑code for the data platform
• Document platform architecture, ingestion pipelines, and operational runbooks
• Assist AI engineers by building and maintaining MCP (Model Context Protocol) connectors and other data/tool integrations that power agentic workflows

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Information Systems, or related field, or equivalent practical experience
• 5+ years of experience in data engineering or platform engineering roles, including extensive hands‑on experience administering and building on Databricks (clusters, jobs, Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, SQL warehouses)
• Demonstrated experience managing Databricks infrastructure as code using Terraform
• Strong proficiency in Python and SQL for building and optimizing data pipelines
• Experience designing and building data ingestion pipelines from diverse internal and external data sources (APIs, SFTP, third‑party vendor feeds, streaming)
• Working knowledge of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure ) and associated data/storage services
• Experience supporting business intelligence or natural‑language dashboarding tools (e.g., Databricks Genie )
• Experience implementing data governance, security, and access controls in Databricks (e.g., Unity Catalog permissions, row/column‑level security, service principals, secrets management)
• Ability to explain pipeline and dashboard design decisions to non‑technical stakeholders, e.g., when scoping Genie dashboard requirements with business users

Preferred

• Databricks certifications (e.g., Databricks Certified Data Engineer Professional, Databricks Certified Associate/Professional Platform Administrator)
• Experience with Databricks Genie and building natural‑language / self‑service analytics experiences for business users
• Experience integrating data from external data providers or vendor APIs at enterprise scale
• Familiarity with CI/CD tooling (e.g., GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, GitLab CI) for automated deployment of Terraform‑managed infrastructure
• Experience with data orchestration tools (e.g., Databricks Workflows, Airflow, dbt)
• Experience building and supporting agentic workloads on Databricks, including managing model/tool access and governance via the Unity Catalog AI Gateway
• Expertise in pharma or pharma‑related data (e.g., clinical, R&D, regulatory, or commercial pharma data) and the compliance considerations that come with it

Wisconsin pay range

$155,000—$175,000 USD

California pay range

$175,000—$190,000 USD

Arrowhead provides competitive salaries and an excellent benefit package.

Candidates must have current, valid authorization to work in the country where this role is located.

California Applicant Privacy Policy