Senior Data Engineer

cloudandthings.io; Johannesburg; On-site; ZAR 1,000,000 - 1,600,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation package

Flexible work environment

Career development and mentorship

Cutting-edge technology projects

Job summary

cloudandthings.io is seeking a Senior Data Engineer to lead the design, build and operation of cloud-native data platforms across AWS and Azure, enabling real-time analytics and AI use cases. You will own delivery across the full data lifecycle—ingestion, transformation, modelling and serving—and work hands-on while providing technical direction.

Based in Johannesburg, you will shape architecture, set engineering standards, mentor engineers, and drive production-grade solutions for enterprise

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.
• 7+ years in data or software engineering with data platforms.
• Experience with lakehouse platforms (Databricks or Fabric).

Responsibilities

• Lead design and delivery of cloud-native data platforms.
• Own end-to-end solution design from discovery to production.
• Set engineering standards and review processes.
• Mentor engineers and contribute to hiring.
• Collaborate with clients to shape architecture and drive outcomes.

Skills

Python

SQL

Databricks

Microsoft Fabric

Terraform

Git

CI/CD

Linux

Spark / PySpark

Education

Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or related field

Tools

Databricks

Microsoft Fabric

Terraform

Bicep

Git

CI/CD

Job description

About cloudandthings.io

At cloudandthings.io, we are an engineering-led consultancy focused on building modern Data and AI Platforms for enterprise clients.

We don't just design architectures; we build real systems that power analytics, decision-making, and AI at scale. We operate with high standards, strong ownership, and a bias for execution.

We are looking for people who think from first principles, challenge conventional thinking, and take deep ownership of what they deliver - engineers who don't simply identify problems, but solve them and see them through to a running system in production.

The Role

As a Senior Data Engineer, you will lead the design, build, and operation of modern, cloud-native data platforms across AWS and Azure, using Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, and cloud-native services. You will own delivery across the full data lifecycle — ingestion, transformation, modelling, and serving — enabling real-time analytics, reporting, and AI use cases.

This is a hands-on senior role. You will still be in the code every day, but you will also be the person clients and engineers look to for technical direction: shaping the architecture, making the trade-off calls, setting the standards, and raising the level of everyone around you.

Much of our work centres on lakehouse platforms, so proven depth in Databricks and/or Microsoft Fabric is essential.

Key Responsibilities

The list below is broad. We expect production-grade experience across a substantial portion of it, and the judgement to know which tools a given problem actually calls for.

Technical Leadership and Delivery Ownership

• Act as technical lead on client engagements: own the solution design end to end, from discovery and architecture through to a supported production platform.
• Translate ambiguous business requirements into pragmatic designs, and communicate them credibly to engineers and senior client stakeholders.
• Make and justify architectural trade-offs.
• Set and enforce engineering standards: code review, testing, branching and release strategy, definition of done.
• Mentor and grow junior and mid-level engineers through pairing, review and feedback; contribute to hiring and technical assessment.
• Contribute to internal capability: reusable accelerators, reference architectures, and solution-shaping input.

Software Engineering Foundations

• Strong grounding in software engineering fundamentals (data structures, algorithms, design patterns), and the ability to hold others to that standard.
• Advanced proficiency in Python and SQL (additional languages advantageous).
• Deep experience with Git and CI/CD — able to design a branching and deployment strategy for a team, not just work within one.
• Hands-on Infrastructure as Code with Terraform or Bicep, including the Databricks provider and Fabric deployment automation; able to own a platform's IaC estate.
• Promoting data assets as code: Databricks Asset Bundles and Repos, Fabric Git integration and deployment pipelines.
• Comfortable in Linux environments.

Ingestion and Streaming

• Design scalable ingestion across hybrid and cloud environments, and the standards other engineers will follow.
• Streaming: AWS Kinesis / MSK (Kafka), Azure Event Hubs, Databricks Structured Streaming, Fabric Eventstream and Real-Time Intelligence (Eventhouse / KQL).
• Incremental and batch: Auto Loader, Lakeflow Connect, Fabric Dataflows Gen2 and Copy Job, AWS DataSync / DMS, Azure Data Factory / Synapse / Fabric Data Pipelines.
• Integration via APIs, JDBC/ODBC and CDC, including Fabric Mirroring (Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, Snowflake, Unity Catalog) and Delta Sharing.

Storage and Lakehouse

• Design and manage data lakes on Amazon S3 and Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2, and architect lakehouse platforms using:
• Databricks — Delta Lake, Unity Catalog (catalogs, schemas, external locations, storage credentials, volumes), managed vs external tables, streaming tables and materialised views, Lakehouse Federation, Delta Sharing.
• Microsoft Fabric — OneLake and shortcuts, Lakehouse, Warehouse, Fabric SQL Database, workspace and domain design, capacity (F SKU) sizing and CU management.
• Table optimisation: partitioning, liquid clustering, Z-ordering, OPTIMIZE / VACUUM, V-Order and statistics, small-file management, time travel and retention.
• Open formats and standards: Delta Lake, Parquet, Avro, JSON, Apache Iceberg / Delta UniForm.
• Relational (Postgres, SQL Server, Aurora), NoSQL (DynamoDB, Cosmos DB) and caching (Redis).

Processing and Transformation

• Build scalable ETL/ELT pipelines using:
• Databricks — PySpark and Spark SQL, Delta Live Tables / Lakeflow Declarative Pipelines, Workflows, serverless and job compute, Photon, cluster policies, dbt.
• Microsoft Fabric — Spark notebooks and job definitions, environments and library management, Warehouse T-SQL and stored procedures, Dataflows Gen2.
• AWS / Azure native — Glue, Lambda, EMR, Synapse Spark.
• Own the data model: medallion architecture (Bronze/Silver/Gold), dimensional models (star schemas, SCD handling), and platform-wide modelling standards.
• Build reusable, testable pipelines: modular notebooks and Python packages, parameterisation, unit and integration testing, idempotent and restartable loads.
• Lead Spark performance and cost tuning: skew and shuffle management, caching, right-sizing compute, autoscaling — and diagnose the problems others cannot.

Analytics and AI Enablement

• Design platforms that support BI, advanced analytics, machine learning and AI use cases:
• Databricks — SQL warehouses, AI/BI dashboards and Genie, MLflow, Unity Catalog model registry, Model Serving, Mosaic AI (Vector Search, agent and RAG patterns), feature engineering.
• Microsoft Fabric — semantic models and Direct Lake, Power BI report and dataset design, DAX, Fabric Data Science, Data Agents and Copilot.
• AWS — Redshift, Athena, SageMaker and Bedrock where relevant.
• Partner with data scientists and analysts on feature engineering and real-time decisioning systems.
• Establish data quality, observability and lineage frameworks: DLT expectations, Unity Catalog lineage and system tables, Fabric monitoring hub, freshness and volume alerting.

Security, Governance and Compliance

• Design secure, enterprise-grade platforms: AWS IAM, Azure Entra ID, RBAC, managed identities and service principals.
• Governance: Unity Catalog (namespace design, grants and inheritance, row filters and column masks, attribute-based access, audit logs); Fabric (workspace roles and item permissions, OneLake security, sensitivity labels, domains, Purview); AWS Lake Formation.
• Networking: VPC / VNets, private endpoints, Direct Connect / ExpressRoute, Databricks secure cluster connectivity and Private Link, Fabric private links and managed VNets.
• Encryption: KMS / Key Vault / TLS, customer-managed keys, secret scopes.
• Engage with client security and architecture forums to get designs approved.

Orchestration and Operations

• Orchestrate with Databricks Workflows, AWS Step Functions / MWAA (Airflow), ADF / Synapse and Fabric Data Pipelines.
• Monitoring and observability: CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Databricks system tables and query history, Fabric Capacity Metrics and monitoring hub.
• Own the operational posture of what you build: SLAs, alerting, incident response, root cause analysis, and runbooks.
• Drive reliability, performance and cost optimisation (FinOps): compute policies, serverless vs classic, tagging and chargeback, Fabric capacity smoothing and pause/resume.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.
• Typically 7+ years in data or software engineering, with at least 3 years building data platforms on AWS and/or Azure.
• A track record of delivering production data solutions end-to-end — including at least one platform you can talk through in depth: the constraints, the decisions, and what you'd do differently.
• Substantial hands-on production experience with at least one lakehouse platform (Databricks or Fabric), working knowledge of the other, and the appetite to build depth.
• Experience leading a workstream or small team: setting technical direction, reviewing work, and mentoring.
• Confident client-facing communication. Able to run a design workshop, defend an architecture, and explain a trade-off to a non-technical audience.
• Certifications advantageous, professional or expert level especially: Databricks (Data Engineer Professional / Associate, Machine Learning Associate); Microsoft (DP-700, DP-600, DP-203, AZ-305); AWS (Data Engineer Associate, Solutions Architect Associate / Professional).
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes and CI/CD for data workloads.
• Strong working knowledge of data security and compliance standards.
• Strong problem-solving skills, with the judgement to know when a simple solution beats a sophisticated one.
• Self-organising, able to prioritise across multiple tasks and competing stakeholders.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, and a collaborative approach with clients and colleagues.
• Willingness to travel to clients as and when required.

What We Offer

• A culture of engineering and an environment where ideas are heard, and builders can build.
• Competitive compensation and bonus structure.
• A flexible, supportive environment that values diversity, work-life balance and personal growth.
• Career advancement, mentorship and ongoing development.
• Cutting-edge technology, engaging client projects, and a talented team around you.