Data Platform Architect

This is an opportunity for a Data Platform Lead position within First Orion’s Data Engineering organization, responsible for owning, governing, designing, and evolving our enterprise data platform built on Databricks. This role will serve as the primary steward of the platform that underpins customer success, billing, analytics, AI/ML workloads, and data sharing across the organization.

In this role, you will be accountable for establishing and maintaining a scalable, governed, and cost‑efficient data platform aligned with Databricks best practices and industry standards. You will work closely with engineering, data science, DevOps, security, and business stakeholders to ensure the platform enables high‑quality data products and accelerates innovation while maintaining strong governance and cost visibility.

We are looking for a team player who is positive, self‑motivated, and highly analytical with a strong sense of ownership. A successful candidate must demonstrate system thinking, strong technical leadership, and the ability to drive platform strategy while supporting cross‑functional teams.

What you’ll be doing:

• Own and operate the Databricks platform, ensuring overall platform health and reliability
• Design and enforce data platform governance using Unity Catalog and hub‑and‑spoke architecture
• Define and implement cluster policies, compute configurations, and data access controls
• Manage identity and access lifecycle including SSO/SCIM integrations
• Lead FinOps practices including tagging, cost monitoring, and compute optimization
• Act as primary liaison with Databricks (support, QBRs, roadmap alignment)
• Define and execute platform roadmap and evaluate new features
• Establish best practices and enable engineering teams
• Partner with engineering teams to ensure scalability and production readiness
• Ensure separation of duties across platform, engineering, and security

What you’ll need:

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science or related field
• 4+ years of experience in data engineering, platform engineering, or cloud infrastructure
• 3+ years of experience with Databricks and Apache Spark
• Strong Terraform experience (modules, state management, CI/CD pipelines)
• Deep understanding of Unity Catalog, including privilege inheritance, securable objects, and governance models
• Experience with AWS or similar cloud platforms
• Strong understanding of data governance and access control
• Experience with FinOps and cost optimization
• Familiarity with identity management (SSO/SCIM)
• Strong SQL and distributed processing experience
• Ability to design scalable and secure data architectures
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills

Bonus Points:

• Experience with hub‑and‑spoke or data mesh architectures
• Experience with AI/ML platforms and model serving
• FinOps tooling experience
• Cloud or Databricks certifications
• Telecom or high‑scale data systems experience

Company Benefits:

We offer open PTO, company paid holidays, Flex Fridays, and flexible work arrangements. We are committed to employee health and wellness with a state‑of‑the‑art fitness center, generous health/dental/vision options, retirement plans, learning and development programs, career path frameworks, tuition reimbursement, company options, and bonus potential.

Disclosure:

First Orion is an affirmative action and equal opportunity employer. This job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Activities, duties, and responsibilities may change at any time with or without notice, based on the changing needs of our business.

This position is not eligible for employment‑based immigration visa/status sponsorship. Employees are required to demonstrate proper work authorization as required by I‑9 compliance.

First Orion is interested in every qualified candidate who is eligible to work in the United States. First Orion’s immigration sponsorship policy is applied in a nondiscriminatory fashion regardless of race, gender, ethnic origin, or any other classification protected by law.