Senior Data Platform Engineer

Kforce has a client in Kansas City, MO that is looking for a Senior Data Platform Engineer with strong experience building and evolving modern data- and AI-enabled platforms. This is a hands-on, senior individual contributor role focused on designing, developing, and optimizing scalable software solutions across data, analytics, and AI workloads. Duties:

• Design, develop, and maintain scalable software components for data and AI platforms using Microsoft Fabric, Azure Data Services, Data Lakes, and cloud-native services
• Build robust data ingestion, transformation, and serving layers that support analytics, AI, and operational use cases
• Contribute to end-to-end delivery of data and AI solutions, including data pipelines, semantic models, APIs, and consumption layers
• Ensure solutions meet standards for performance, reliability, security, and cost efficiency
• Participate in modernizing legacy systems toward cloud-native and AI-enabled architectures
• Optimize pipelines, queries, and services for scale, resilience, and operational excellence
• Partner with analytics, AI/ML, and application teams to deliver reusable data assets, shared services, and self-service capabilities
• Support downstream use cases such as dashboards, advanced analytics, and machine learning workloads
• Apply and promote best practices for software engineering, CI/CD, testing, observability, and infrastructure-as-code
• Contribute to standards for data quality, data governance, lineage, security, and monitoring (e.g., DataDog)
• Data governance, risk management, and compliance using Microsoft Purview
• Provide technical guidance and code reviews for peers and junior engineers
• Collaborate closely with product managers, architects, and cross-functional partners to deliver high-impact solutions
• Bachelor's degree in a related field or the equivalent through a combination of education and related work experience
• Azure or Microsoft Fabric certifications
• 5+ years of experience building production-grade software, with significant exposure to data platforms, cloud services, or AI-enabled systems
• Strong hands-on experience with Azure data technologies and modern data architecture patterns
• Proficiency in SQL, with solid software engineering fundamentals (data modeling, APIs, testing, version control)
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, DevOps practices, and cloud infrastructure
• Ability to design systems, reason about trade-offs, and contribute to architectural discussions
• Strong communication skills and the ability to work effectively with cross-functional teams
• A growth mindset and passion for learning, quality engineering, and continuous improvement
• Experience with Microsoft Fabric
• Experience with OneLake, Lakehouse architecture, Power Platforms, or Fabric-native governance tools
• Exposure to feature stores, or advanced analytics