Job Description
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.
- Set Medallion Architecture standards-Bronze/Silver/Gold, SCD/CDC, data quality, retention, performance.
- Architect modern ingestion using AutoLoader, Lakeflow Connect, batch/streaming/CDC.
- Lead Unity Catalog governance-namespace strategy, access models, lineage, secure-by-design patterns.
- 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 (eg Data Engineer, ML, GenAI Engineer).
- Proven Medallion Architecture design.
- 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.
- Mature production architecture-Workflows, secrets, testing, observability.
- 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.
If this sounds like you, get in touch!
Databricks Champion Architect in London 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.
