Databricks Administrator (Onsite)

Role: Databricks Administrator

Work Location: Washington, DC

Contract: 10+ months contract (possible to extend)

Note: Onsite

Job description:

Client is looking for a Databricks Administrator is the hands-on technical owner of the agency’s Databricks platform supporting EDP. This role is accountable for platform operations, security, and governance configuration end-to-end—ensuring the environment is compliant, reliable, cost-controlled, and enables secure analytics and AI/ML workloads at scale.

Required Experience:

• Hands-on experience administering Databricks (workspace administration, clusters/compute policies, jobs, SQL warehouses, repos, runtime management) and expertise using Databricks CLI.
• Strong Unity Catalog administration: metastores; catalogs/schemas; grants; service principals; external locations; storage credentials; governed storage access.
• 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, and evidence-ready operations.
• Cloud platform expertise (AWS ): IAM roles/policies, object storage security patterns, networking basics (VPC concepts), logging/monitoring integration.
• Automation skills: scripting and/or IaC using Terraform/CLI/REST APIs for repeatable configuration and environment promotion.
• Experience implementing data governance controls (classification/tagging, lineage/metadata integrations) in partnership with governance teams.
• CI/CD practices for jobs/notebooks/config promotion across SDLC environments.
• Understanding of lakehouse concepts (e.g., Delta, table lifecycle management, separation of storage/compute).
• SQL proficiency and data engineering fundamentals for troubleshooting query performance issues, understanding ETL/ELT workflow patterns, and debugging data pipeline failures; basic Python/Scala familiarity for notebook/code issue diagnosis.
• Experience with compliance and regulatory frameworks (FedRAMP, HIPAA, SOC2, or similar) including implementation of data residency requirements, retention policies, and audit-ready evidence collection.
• Hands-on experience with AWS security and networking services including PrivateLink, Secrets Manager/Systems Manager integration, CloudWatch/CloudTrail integration, S3 bucket policies, cross-account access patterns, and KMS encryption key management.
• Experience administering Databricks serverless compute, Workspace Git integrations (GitLab), Databricks Asset Bundles (DABs) for deployment automation, and modern workspace features supporting DevOps workflows.
• SLA/SLO management and stakeholder communication skills; ability to define platform service levels, produce operational reports, translate technical issues to business stakeholders, and manage vendor relationships (Databricks account teams).

Education / Experience:

• 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.

Certifications:

• Databricks Platform Administrator/Databricks AWS Platform Architect
• Databricks Certified Data Engineer Associate/Professional
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate or Professional