Solutions Architect 4

Role Description

We are recruiting on behalf of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for a Senior Databricks Solution Architect. This role provides hands-on architectural guidance across the full Databricks stack — advising on the reference architecture spanning Lakeflow, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Mosaic AI, Databricks SQL, and Databricks Apps — and helps shape solution design, data movement, governance, and platform migration strategy.

The architect partners closely with data engineering, analytics, AI/ML, and information and cyber security teams to ensure designs meet the organization’s data classification policy, security standards, and applicable regulatory requirements.

Key Responsibilities

• Advise on the Databricks reference architecture covering Lakeflow, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Mosaic AI, Databricks SQL, and Databricks Apps.
• Provide hands-on guidance on Databricks full-stack solution design.
• Advise on the design of both data movement (batch, real-time streaming) and zero-copy patterns.
• Guide platform migrations from legacy SQL and document stores onto Databricks and related cloud data platforms.
• Recommend security, governance, and compliance-as-code, including Unity Catalog ABAC, governed tags, row filters and column masks, key management, networking security, and compliance security profiles.
• Advise on the design of segregated/tiered data pool architectures aligned to the organization’s data classification policy and applicable regulatory requirements, including cross-tier data movement.
• Recommend FinOps and performance standards, including workload and cost management.
• Mentor data engineers, analysts, and AI/ML teams; participate in architecture reviews and contribute to standards.
• Work with information and cyber security and other teams as needed to ensure compliance with policies and standards.
• Evaluate emerging Databricks capabilities and recommend adoption strategies, including endpoint integrations with third parties as they evolve.

Qualifications

• Seven or more years designing, building, and operating Databricks workloads with medallion-layer architecture, including hands-on experience across the Databricks platform and supporting cloud infrastructure.

Requirements

• 7+ years designing, building, and operating Databricks workloads with medallion layer architecture.
• Hands-on experience with Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Spark Structured Streaming, Lakeflow (or DLT/Live Tables), Databricks SQL, MLflow, and Mosaic AI Model Serving.
• Strong experience in cloud architecture supporting the platform (VPC/VNet, security, S3/ADLS, KMS, etc.).
• Proven experience migrating enterprise data workloads from legacy/on-prem data warehouse/lake to Databricks.
• Production streaming and CDC experience.
• Depth in security and governance: Unity Catalog policies (ABAC), classification, encryption, access auditing, and compliance-to-control translation.
• Hands-on experience designing multi-tier Databricks architectures driven by data classification requirements.
• Strong Python and SQL, Spark, and Notebooks.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Active Databricks certifications.
• GenAI and agent systems on Databricks experience.
• Delta Sharing and Databricks Clean Rooms for controlled, governed data exchange across organizational, cross-tier, and system boundaries.
• Familiarity with Oracle EBS and SAP enterprise data.
• Experience with SAP BDC/DataSphere and Databricks integration to SAP BDC, with zero-copy patterns.
• Lakeflow Designer, Databricks Apps, Genie, and Databricks One.
• CI/CD and Infrastructure-as-Code (e.g., Terraform) for data platforms.
• Experience designing, building, and supporting BI reporting layers.
• Data quality and data governance experience.
• Prior experience in regulated industries (e.g., utilities, life sciences, government services) and exposure to related frameworks (e.g., FERC/NERC, HIPAA, GxP, GDPR, FedRAMP, ITAR).

Contract Details

• Duration: 1-year base contract with two (2) 1-year option periods. Option periods are not guaranteed and are executed at the discretion of the hiring manager.
• Work Schedule: Standard full-time schedule.

Interview Process

• Interviews are conducted via Microsoft Teams.

Equal Opportunity Statement

COMPA is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration regardless of age, race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, or protected Veteran status. Certain criminal histories may disqualify candidates for specific positions, per company policy.