We’re hiring a Databricks Champion Architect to define and govern our modern lakehouse architecture. You’ll blend solution design, hands‑on technical leadership, and platform enablement; setting patterns, accelerating delivery teams, and ensuring production‑ready engineering on a contract basis.
What you’ll do
Own end‑to‑end Databricks architecture across ingestion, transformation, governance, serving, and operations.
Architect modern ingestion using AutoLoader, Lakeflow Connect, batch/streaming/CDC.
Define DLT with Expectations—quality rules, quarantine, observability.
Drive production‑ready engineering—CI/CD, environments, monitoring, runbooks.
Align with security, EA, governance, platform and delivery teams.
Enable squads with playbooks, templates, ADRs, coaching.
Support pre‑sales and roadmap—HLDs, estimation, risks, proposals.
What you’ll bring
Minimum
2+ years recent hands‑on Databricks experience using modern features.
Clear evidence of architecture ownership.
Must Have
Two active Databricks certifications (e.g. Data Engineer, ML, GenAI Engineer).
Unity Catalog architecture experience.
DLT with Expectations implementation.
Modern ingestion with AutoLoader/Lakeflow Connect.
Ability to articulate recent Databricks feature usage.
Should Have
Strong Delta Lake performance skills—MERGE/CDC, partitioning, OPTIMIZE/ZORDER, VACUUM.
Cloud integration (Azure/AWS/GCP).
Ability to standardise and influence across teams.
Nice to Have
Lakeflow connectors, RBAC/masking, GenAI (Mosaic AI, Vector Search, RAG), Lakebase.
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Databricks Champion Architect employer: IO Associates
Join a leading engineering organisation that values innovation and excellence, offering a dynamic work culture where your contributions directly impact high-performance solutions in safety-critical environments. With a strong focus on employee growth, you will have the opportunity to mentor fellow engineers and shape technical direction while working in an Agile/SAFe environment. Located in the UK, this role provides a unique chance to be part of cutting-edge projects in defence, aerospace, and industrial technology, ensuring a rewarding and meaningful career path.
