Senior Databricks Architect – Remote Data Lakehouse Leader

Cognizant; Olympia (WA); Remote; USD 160,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Cognizant is seeking an experienced Databricks Architect to lead enterprise data modernization efforts. This role focuses on Databricks Lakehouse design, AWS cloud integration, and large-scale data migrations to a scalable Databricks ecosystem.

Ideal candidates will have 12+ years in data engineering/architecture and 5+ years in Databricks architecture, with strong Python/SQL skills and a background in governance, security, and metadata management.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of Data Engineering/Data Architecture experience.
• 5+ years of hands-on Databricks Architecture experience.
• Deep expertise in Databricks Lakehouse, Spark/PySpark, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Databricks SQL.
• Strong AWS cloud experience (S3, IAM, networking, security).
• Experience designing enterprise data models and data integration patterns.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement enterprise-scale Databricks Lakehouse architecture.
• Lead data modernization and migration programs from legacy platforms to Databricks.
• Architect scalable ELT/ETL pipelines using Databricks, Spark, Delta Lake, and Python.
• Define data governance, security, lineage, and metadata management strategies using Unity Catalog.
• Design batch and real-time data processing solutions.
• Provide architecture guidance for cloud-native solutions on AWS.
• Collaborate with business, analytics, and engineering teams to define data strategies.
• Establish best practices for data quality, monitoring, performance tuning, and cost optimization.
• Create architecture standards, reference architectures, and technical documentation.
• Mentor data engineers and technical leads throughout the development lifecycle.
• Evaluate and recommend emerging technologies and AI/ML capabilities within the Databricks ecosystem.

Skills

Databricks Lakehouse

Apache Spark

Delta Lake

Databricks Workflows

Unity Catalog

Databricks SQL

Python

SQL

AWS Cloud

Data Governance

Data Migration

Stakeholder Management

Communication

Data Modeling

Tools

Terraform

Snowflake

Job description

Cognizant is seeking an experienced Databricks Architect to lead enterprise data modernization efforts. This role focuses on Databricks Lakehouse design, AWS cloud integration, and large-scale data migrations to a scalable Databricks ecosystem.

Ideal candidates will have 12+ years in data engineering/architecture and 5+ years in Databricks architecture, with strong Python/SQL skills and a background in governance, security, and metadata management.