Platform Strategy Application Engineer

Data is a strategic asset of the organization, informing all aspects of business decision-making. This contract provides temporary coverage within the Platform Strategy Data & Dev Ops Engineering team, maintaining continuity on solutions that power real-time insights and services, including generative AI initiatives, on the firm's Data Platform internal products and platforms.

We're looking for a contractor who can ramp quickly and step into ongoing work with minimal onboarding lag — someone with a strong background combining software development and systems engineering to support scalable, distributed, fault-tolerant systems already in production. This person should be comfortable picking up existing codebases and operational responsibilities, troubleshooting production issues, and maintaining momentum on in-flight projects during the coverage period.

Responsibilities:

• Drive and build solutions to enable DataOps processes — pipeline reliability, data quality gates, versioning, and continuous testing/monitoring across the data lifecycle.
• Maintain, deploy, and run existing applications supporting the firm's data analytics, real-time, and AI solutions.
• Build solutions to migrate from open source Confluent Kafka to Azure Event Hubs.
• Build automation solutions for system scaling, CI/CD, monitoring, testing, and observability.
• Monitor and help sustain data/analytics platform health, performance, and reliability.
• Participate in on-call rotations; respond to and help resolve incidents.
• Ensure smooth handoff/transition at contract end, including documentation of work performed.

Required Skills:

• Expertise with the Databricks ecosystem: Spark, Python, and Airflow
• Proficiency with Kafka and related streaming technologies: REST Proxy, Kafka Connect, Kafka Streams, Spark Streaming, Azure Event Hubs
• Strong programming background in one or more major languages: Python, Java, JavaScript, etc.
• Demonstrated experience creating APIs and microservices
• Solid understanding of software testing and data quality practices
• Experience with database/data warehouse platforms: Databricks, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, Redshift
• Proficiency with Unix and containerization technologies: Kubernetes, Helm, Docker
• Experience configuring/using observability tools: Prometheus, Grafana, New Relic
• CI/CD pipeline design and deployment automation for data platforms (e.g., CircleCI or equivalent), including orb/reusable-component contribution workflows
• Experience with job scheduling and orchestration tools (e.g., Airflow, Astronomer, Lakeflow Jobs) and environment promotion practices (dev/stage/prod)
• Kubernetes for containerized workload deployment and management
• Familiarity with runbook development and enforcement for operational governance
• Ability to work independently and productively with minimal ramp-up time
• 4+ years of relevant hands-on experience
• BS in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent hands-on experience

Preferred Skills:

• Experience building AI applications
• Web UI development: HTML/CSS/JavaScript/jQuery
• Cloud platform experience (AWS, Azure)
• Build automation/config management: CircleCI, Saltstack, Jenkins, Argo CD
• Exposure to NoSQL technologies: Redis, Cassandra, MongoDB, DynamoDB

Required Skills:

• Expertise with the Databricks ecosystem: Spark, Python, and Airflow
• Proficiency with Kafka and related streaming technologies: REST Proxy, Kafka Connect, Kafka Streams, Spark Streaming, Azure Event Hubs
• Strong programming background in one or more major languages: Python, Java, JavaScript, etc.
• Demonstrated experience creating APIs and microservices
• Solid understanding of software testing and data quality practices
• Experience with database/data warehouse platforms: Databricks, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, Redshift
• Proficiency with Unix and containerization technologies: Kubernetes, Helm, Docker
• Experience configuring/using observability tools: Prometheus, Grafana, New Relic
• CI/CD pipeline design and deployment automation for data platforms (e.g., CircleCI or equivalent), including orb/reusable-component contribution workflows
• Experience with job scheduling and orchestration tools (e.g., Airflow, Astronomer, Lakeflow Jobs) and environment promotion practices (dev/stage/prod)
• Kubernetes for containerized workload deployment and management
• Familiarity with runbook development and enforcement for operational governance
• Ability to work independently and productively with minimal ramp-up time
• 4+ years of relevant hands-on experience
• BS in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent hands-on experience