About this role
Key Responsibilities
Orchestration Platform (Apache Airflow & ADF)
- Own the Apache Airflow platform: environments, deployment, upgrades, configuration, connections, variables, pools and DAG standards .
- Work on the migration from Azure Data Factory to Airflow and the evolution of the Metadata-Driven Orchestration Framework (DAG generation, reusable operators, dependency and scheduling patterns).
- Ensure Airflow is reliable and observable : SLAs, alerting, retries, backfills, health monitoring and clear failure ownership.
Azure Resource Management
- Manage Azure resources with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) : Databricks workspaces, Data Lake Storage , Data Factory, Key Vault , networking and supporting services.
- Own secrets and identity management : Key Vault, service principals and managed identities, secret scopes and rotation.
- Own access management : Azure RBAC, Entra ID groups, Unity Catalog grants and ownership, following least privilege , plus access requests and periodic reviews.
- Own Azure DevOps : repositories, CI/CD pipelines , branch policies and multi-environment promotion , including deployment validation and Terraform state.
- Track cost and governance of Azure resources: tagging, budgets, right-sizing and cost attribution (e.g. query tagging).
Hands-on Data Platform evolution
- Contribute to the implementation of the Data Catalog and Data Quality Framework and it’s lineage across the platform.
- Drive observability : pipelines that are observable, debuggable and alert-driven, with clear ownership of failures.
- Operate the Databricks platform: Unity Catalog structure, cluster and job policies, Auto Loader ingestion patterns, and performance and cost optimization of workloads.
Technical Leadership
- Participate in architecture reviews and technical decision-making, stating trade-offs (performance, cost, reliability, complexity) with data.
- Define and promote engineering standards : naming conventions, patterns and guidelines, through code reviews and design reviews.
- Collaborate with Architects, Product Owners and data engineers in technical maturation of data products.
- Build and maintain developer tooling and automation , including AI-assisted engineering workflows (shared agent instructions, skills, automated PR review).
Support & Operations (Run Team Collaboration)
- Provide second-line support to the Run/Operations team for complex production topics.
- Troubleshoot and resolve platform incidents , failures and performance issues; lead root cause analysis and post-mortems.
- Ensure proper handover, documentation and operational readiness of platform changes.
- Continuously improve runbooks, monitoring and operational processes .
Technical Skills
6+ years of experience in data engineering, with significant time on platform or infrastructure topics
Strong technical expertise with Python and SQL (advanced), including PySpark and Delta Lake semantics
Deep hands-on experience with Apache Airflow in production: DAG design, deployment, operations, upgrades, and orchestration of Databricks and ADF workloads
Hands-on experience with Azure resource management:
Key Vault, managed identities and service principals, secret management
Access management: Azure RBAC, Entra ID, Unity Catalog permissions
Azure DevOps (repos, pipelines, service connections, environments) and CI/CD for data platforms
ADLS, networking and security basics, Azure Data Factory
Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) and multi-environment promotion
Hands-on experience with Databricks and Unity Catalog (compute, jobs, governance)
Observability and monitoring, alerting and incident management
Solid understanding of Data Lakehouse architecture, Medallion architecture and metadata-driven architecture; awareness of cost management and performance
Soft Skills
Strong problem-solving and analytical thinking
Ability to work in cross-functional teams and to influence without authority
Ownership mindset and attention to detail
Good communication skills with both technical and business stakeholders: leads with the recommendation, quantifies, and is transparent about uncertainty