Senior Field Specialist - Data Lakehouse (Apache Iceberg)

Cloudera

Wilmington (DE)

Remote

USD 166,000 - 200,000

Full time

4 days ago

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Benefits offered by this job

Generous PTO Policy

Unplugged Days

Flexible WFH Policy

Mental & Physical Wellness programs

Phone and Internet Reimbursement

Continued Career Development

Comprehensive Benefits and Competitive

Job summary

Cloudera is seeking a Field Specialist - Data Lakehouse (Apache Iceberg) to lead enterprise customer engagements, design cloud-native lakehouse architectures, and advance BI and AI use cases across industries. You will partner with Sales, Product, and Engineering to translate customer needs into scalable data solutions.

This role travels about monthly, requires strong SQL and big data warehousing expertise, and involves PoCs, MVPs, and roadmap influence.

Qualifications

Experience leading data warehousing and BI in enterprise environments.
Hands-on design/deploy of lakehouses on Iceberg and cloud-native architectures.
Strong SQL and big data warehousing tech with PoC/MVP experience.

Responsibilities

Lead customer engagements by designing scalable lakehouse architectures.
Support PoCs, solution sizing, and adoption for BI and AI use cases.
Troubleshoot complex data issues and guide escalations.
Enable internal and external teams with best practices in modern warehousing.
Influence product roadmap from customer feedback.

Skills

Pre-sales experience

Data warehousing

Big data analytics

Technical presentation

Customer engagement

Tools

Apache Iceberg

Trino

Apache Hive

Apache Impala

CDW/Cloud architectures

Job description

At Cloudera, we empower people to transform complex data into clear and actionable insights. With as much data under management as the hyperscalers, we're the preferred data partner for the top companies in almost every industry. Powered by the relentless innovation of the open source community, Cloudera advances digital transformation for the world’s largest enterprises.

Are you passionate about making data and AI use cases accessible for enterprise clients?

Cloudera is seeking a customer-facing, hands‑on Field Specialist - Data Lakehouse (Apache Iceberg) to join our global team. In this pivotal pre‑sales role, you'll leverage your deep technical expertise to empower our customers, influence product direction, and drive success across our most impactful Business Intelligence (BI) and AI‑ready analytics use cases. If you thrive on creative freedom and shaping the future of open data lakehouses and modern data warehousing at scale, we encourage you to apply.

As a Data Lakehouse & Warehousing Specialist, You Will (Responsibilities)

Lead customer engagements by designing and presenting scalable, cloud-native lakehouse architectures and business outcomes to technical and executive stakeholders.
Provide deep domain expertise throughout the sales cycle, supporting PoCs, solution sizing, and adoption for new and existing customers focusing on self-serve BI, open table formats (Iceberg), and AI-ready data analytics.
Troubleshoot and resolve complex technical issues related to query performance, concurrent workload management, and data federation, providing guidance and leading escalations.
Drive internal and external technical enablement by exploring new analytical engines, developing educational materials, and sharing best practices around modern data warehousing.
Influence product roadmap by translating customer feedback and region-specific requirements into actionable insights for our product and engineering teams.
Act as a Cloudera evangelist, participating in community activities, speaking at events, and contributing to knowledge sharing around the open data lakehouse paradigm.
Collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams (Sales, Product, Engineering) to align on customer success and product vision.
Travel: Ability to travel to customer sites and Cloudera hubs approximately once per month.

We’re excited about you if you have:

Proven experience leading and implementing mission‑critical data warehousing and BI use cases in industries such as Financial Services, Retail, Healthcare, Public Sector, etc.
Proven hands‑on experience designing, building, and deploying enterprise‑grade data lakehouses built on Apache Iceberg and modern cloud‑native architectures
Hands‑on expertise with leading SQL engines, open table formats, and big data warehousing technologies, specifically Apache Iceberg, Trino, Apache Hive, and Apache Impala.
Strong background in architecting production data deployments across hybrid and multi‑cloud environments, with specific expertise in massive‑scale BI, ad‑hoc analytics, and building an AI‑ready data foundation.
Demonstrated ability to run Proofs of Concept (PoCs) and MVPs that lead to successful, enterprise‑grade production deployments, ensuring high‑concurrency query performance and cost optimization.
Practical experience in designing data‑intensive architectures, including data modeling, navigating security, data quality, and the governance challenges required to serve trusted data to both analysts and data scientists.
Exceptional presentation skills, comfortable engaging with diverse audiences from SQL developers and data analysts to senior executives.
Ability to analyze customer data warehouse workloads and define technical migration or modernization roadmaps (e.g., from legacy appliances to an open data lakehouse) tailored to their specific needs.

You’ll Be Well‑Positioned for Success If You Bring (Bonus Qualifications):

Prior experience in pre‑sales or technical consulting roles with a strong focus on big data, data warehousing, & AI platform solutions.
Direct experience with legacy or competing enterprise data warehouses (e.g., Snowflake, Google BigQuery, Amazon Redshift, Teradata) and advising customers/partners on migration strategies to open‑source, cloud‑native alternatives.
Experience with modern data modeling (e.g., dbt, Star Schema, Data Vault) and optimizing analytical query performance over distributed object storage.
Experience with, and interest in, open‑source software and development practices.
Familiarity with Cloudera Data Warehouse (CDW), Cloudera Machine Learning (CML), and Shared Data Experience (SDX) for unified security and governance.
Relevant technical certifications (e.g., Snowflake SnowPro Core, AWS Certified Data Analytics, Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer).
Working knowledge of the broader open‑source data and AI ecosystem, particularly integration points with data engineering pipelines (e.g., Apache Spark, Airflow).
Deep understanding of how structured, governed data in a lakehouse accelerates the adoption of machine learning, deep learning, and generative AI applications.

This role is not eligible for immigration sponsorship.

The anticipated annual base salary range for this position is:

California: $166,000 - $200,000

Individual compensation within the published range is determined by the candidate’s skills, experience, qualifications, and primary work location. In addition to base pay, sales roles are eligible for Cloudera’s commission plan, while non‑sales roles are eligible for the corporate incentive plan. All employees receive a comprehensive benefits package.

What you can expect from us: