Data Platform Engineer

Role Overview Providge Consulting is hiring a mid-level Data Platform Engineer on a contract basis in Washington, D.C. The role is part of our Lifecycle hiring program. This position is available for the period 02/02/2026 – 12/31/2026, potentially extendable. Salary will be discussed during the interview process. Responsibilities Administer Databricks account and workspaces across SDLC environments; standardize configuration, naming, and operational patterns. Configure and maintain clusters/compute, job compute, SQL warehouses, runtime versions, libraries, repos, and workspace settings. Implement platform monitoring/alerting, operational dashboards, and health checks; maintain runbooks and operational procedures. Provide Tier 2/3 operational support: troubleshoot incidents, perform root‑cause analysis, and drive remediation and preventive actions. Manage change control for upgrades, feature rollouts, configuration changes, and integration changes; document impacts and rollback plans. Enforce least privilege across platform resources using role/group‑based access patterns. Configure and manage secrets and secure credential handling for platform and data connectivity. Enable and maintain audit logging and access/event visibility; support security reviews and evidence requests. Administer Unity Catalog governance: metastores, catalogs/schemas/tables, ownership, grants, and environment/domain patterns. Configure and manage external locations, storage credentials, and governed access to cloud object storage. Partner with governance stakeholders to support metadata/lineage integration, classification/tagging, and retention controls where applicable. Coordinate secure connectivity and guardrails with cloud/network teams: private connectivity patterns, egress controls, firewall/proxy needs. Configure cloud integrations required for governed data access and service connectivity (roles/permissions, endpoints, storage integrations). Produce usage/cost insights and optimization recommendations; address waste drivers. Automate administration and configuration using APIs/CLI/IaC (e.g., Terraform) to reduce manual drift and improve repeatability. Maintain platform documentation: configuration baselines, security/governance standards, onboarding guides, and troubleshooting references. Design and implement backup and disaster recovery procedures for workspace configurations, notebooks, Unity Catalog metadata, and job definitions; maintain recovery runbooks and perform periodic DR testing aligned to RTO/RPO objectives. Monitor and optimize platform performance, including SQL warehouse query tuning, cluster autoscaling configuration, Photon enablement, and Delta Lake optimization guidance. Administer Delta Live Tables (DLT) pipelines and coordinate with data engineering teams on pipeline health, data quality monitoring, failed job remediation, and pipeline health. Manage third‑party integrations and ecosystem connectivity, including BI tool integrations such as Power BI, and external metadata catalog integrations. Conduct capacity planning and scalability analysis, including forecasting concurrent user/workload growth, platform scaling strategies, and proactive resource allocation. Facilitate user onboarding and enablement, including new user/team onboarding procedures, training coordination, workspace access provisioning, and creation of self‑service resources. Qualifications Bachelor’s degree in a related field or equivalent practical experience. 7 + years in cloud/data platform administration and operations, including 4 + years supporting Databricks or similar platforms. Hands‑on experience administering Databricks (workspace administration, clusters/compute policies, jobs, SQL warehouses, repos, runtime management) and strong Unity Catalog administration. Identity & Access Management proficiency: SSO concepts, SCIM provisioning, group‑based RBAC, service principals, least‑privilege patterns. Security fundamentals: secrets management, secure connectivity, audit logging, access monitoring, evidence‑ready operations. Cloud platform expertise (AWS): IAM roles/policies, object storage security patterns, PrivateLink, Secrets Manager, Systems Manager, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, S3 bucket policies, cross‑account access, KMS key management. Automation skills: scripting and/or IaC using Terraform, CLI, REST APIs for repeatable configuration. Experience implementing data governance controls (classification/tagging, lineage/metadata integrations) with governance teams. CI/CD practices for jobs/notebooks/config promotion across SDLC environments. Understanding of lakehouse concepts (Delta, table lifecycle management, separation of storage/compute). SQL proficiency and data engineering fundamentals for troubleshooting query performance, ETL/ELT workflow patterns, and debugging data pipeline failures; basic Python/Scala familiarity. Experience with compliance and regulatory frameworks (FedRAMP, HIPAA, SOC 2) including data residency requirements, retention policies, audit‑ready evidence collection. Experience administering Databricks serverless compute, Workspace Git integrations (GitLab), Databricks Asset Bundles (DABs), and modern workspace features supporting DevOps workflows. Previous experience with Databricks Platform Administrator/Databricks AWS Platform Architect role. AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate or Professional (preferred). #J-18808-Ljbffr