Starburst Engineer

We are

At Synechron, we believe in the power of digital to transform businesses for the better. Our global consulting firm combines creativity and innovative technology to deliver industry-leading digital solutions. Synechron’s progressive technologies and optimization strategies span end-to-end Artificial Intelligence, Consulting, Digital, Cloud & DevOps, Data, and Software Engineering, servicing an array of noteworthy financial services and technology firms. Through research and development initiatives in our FinLabs we develop solutions for modernization, from Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain to Data Science models, Digital Underwriting, mobile-first applications and more. Over the last 20+ years, our company has been honored with multiple employer awards, recognizing our commitment to our talented teams. With top clients to boast about, Synechron has a global workforce of 17,000+, and has 58 offices in 22 countries within key global markets.

Our challenge

We are seeking an experienced Starburst Platform Engineer to support and expand Wells Fargo's enterprise Data Virtualization platform powered by Starburst on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The successful candidate will be responsible for the end-to-end deployment, administration, optimization, and support of the Starburst platform, enabling business users and engineering teams to access and analyze data across multiple on-premises and cloud data sources through a unified SQL layer. This role requires deep expertise in Starburst Enterprise Platform (SEP), Trino, GCP services, Kubernetes/GKE, data access governance, and customer engagement. The engineer will act as a trusted advisor to data consumers, helping optimize SQL workloads, troubleshoot platform issues, and drive adoption of enterprise data virtualization capabilities.

Additional Information*

The base salary for this position will vary based on geography and other factors. In accordance with law, the base salary for this role if filled within Charlotte, NC is $110k - $115k/year & benefits (see below).

The Role

Responsibilities:

- Platform Engineering & Deployment
- Design, deploy, configure, and maintain Starburst Enterprise Platform (SEP) in Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
- Manage Starburst clusters running on GKE, including coordinators, workers, autoscaling, upgrades, patching, and infrastructure optimization.
- Configure and support integrations with BigQuery, Cloud SQL, GCS, Iceberg catalogs, Teradata, Oracle, SQL databases, and other enterprise data sources.
- Implement platform security, IAM integration, RBAC, authentication, authorization, and governance controls.
- Support production, non-production, disaster recovery, and business continuity environments.
- SQL Performance Optimization & Query Acceleration
- Analyze and optimize user SQL workloads for performance, scalability, and cost efficiency.
- Recommend best practices for federated queries, joins, partition pruning, caching, materialized views, and semantic layer usage.
- Troubleshoot long-running queries, memory issues, concurrency bottlenecks, and workload management challenges.
- Assist users in tuning analytical workloads and achieving optimal performance across distributed data sources.
- Provide guidance on Starburst SQL features, query execution behavior, and platform capabilities.
- User Support & Customer Engagement
- Serve as the primary technical contact for Starburst platform consumers.
- Investigate and resolve production incidents, access issues, authentication failures, catalog connectivity problems, and data access concerns.
- Collaborate closely with business stakeholders, analysts, data scientists, data engineers, and application teams.
- Conduct onboarding sessions, knowledge transfer workshops, and platform enablement activities.
- Guide customers through query development, troubleshooting, and platform adoption.
- Manage support tickets and coordinate escalations with vendors, infrastructure teams, and engineering partners.
- Platform Operations & Governance
- Monitor platform health, cluster utilization, catalog performance, and operational metrics.
- Perform capacity planning and workload optimization.
- Automate catalog onboarding, configuration management, and operational processes.
- Ensure compliance with enterprise security, audit, masking, retention, and governance standards.
- Participate in release planning, change management, and production support activities.

Requirements:

- 7+ years of experience supporting large-scale data platforms and analytics solutions.
- 3+ years of hands-on experience with Starburst, Trino, Presto, or distributed SQL engines.
- Strong experience deploying and managing workloads in Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
- Expertise in:
- Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
- BigQuery
- Cloud SQL
- Google Cloud Storage (GCS)
- IAM and Security Controls
- CI/CD and Infrastructure Automation
- Strong SQL development and performance tuning skills.
- Experience with Iceberg catalogs, data lake architectures, and federated query platforms.
- Knowledge of distributed query engines, workload management, and cloud-native architectures.
- Experience with Data Virtualization platforms and Data Mesh architectures.
- Familiarity with Dremio, Dataproc, BigQuery federation, and modern lakehouse technologies.
- Knowledge of Apache Iceberg, Hive Metastore, REST Catalogs, and metadata management.
- Experience supporting enterprise analytics tools such as Tableau, MicroStrategy, ThoughtSpot, or Power BI.
- Financial services industry experience preferred.

Preferred, but not required:

- Ability to communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Strong troubleshooting and problem-solving capabilities.
- Experience supporting enterprise customers and managing production incidents.
- Ability to translate business requirements into technical solutions.
- Proven ability to mentor users on SQL development and performance optimization.

We offer:

- A highly competitive compensation and benefits package.
- A multinational organization with 58 offices in 22 countries and the possibility to work abroad.
- 10 days of paid annual leave (plus sick leave and national holidays).
- Maternity & paternity leave plans.
- A comprehensive insurance plan including medical, dental, vision, life insurance, and long-/short-term disability (plans vary by region).
- Retirement savings plans.
- A higher education certification policy.
- Commuter benefits (varies by region).
- Extensive training opportunities, focused on skills, substantive knowledge, and personal development.
- On-demand Udemy for Business for all Synechron employees with free access to more than 5000 curated courses.
- Coaching opportunities with experienced colleagues from our Financial Innovation Labs (FinLabs) and Center of Excellences (CoE) groups.
- Cutting edge projects at the world’s leading tier-one banks, financial institutions and insurance firms.
- A flat and approachable organization.
- A truly diverse, fun-loving, and global work culture.

S​ YNECHRON’S DIVERSITY & INCLUSION STATEMENT

Diversity & Inclusion are fundamental to our culture, and Synechron is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. Our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiative ‘Same Difference’ is committed to fostering an inclusive culture – promoting equality, diversity and an environment that is respectful to all. We strongly believe that a diverse workforce helps build stronger, successful businesses as a global company. We encourage applicants from across diverse backgrounds, race, ethnicities, religion, age, marital status, gender, sexual orientations, or disabilities to apply. We empower our global workforce by offering flexible workplace arrangements, mentoring, internal mobility, learning and development programs, and more.

All employment decisions at Synechron are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, without regard to the applicant’s gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, disabled or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law .

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