At a Glance
- Tasks: Design and lead data solutions using Databricks while collaborating with a dynamic team.
- Company: Join Red Badger, a vibrant tech consultancy with a diverse team and a fun culture.
- Benefits: Enjoy competitive pay, flexible working, and opportunities for professional growth.
- Other info: Be part of a supportive environment that values learning and collaboration.
- Why this job: Make an impact by solving complex data challenges for top-tier clients.
- Qualifications: 2+ years of Databricks experience and a passion for innovative data architecture.
The predicted salary is between 72000 - 88000 £ per year.
You must have:
- At least 2 years of commercial Databricks experience (current)
- Be able to work 2 days a week onsite in Leeds
- Strong understanding of design and architecture of data systems with patterns like Medallion Architecture, Data fabric, Data mesh
- Databricks certification would be welcome but we prefer hands-on experience over theoretical
About Red Badger:
We’re a tech and product consultancy, building enterprise software products for blue chip companies, multinationals and PLC’s. The best thing about Red Badger is the team. We’ve been around for 15+ years now and we are over 120 strong. We are really proud of our people; we support and learn a lot from each other; we work really hard but have fun doing it. We are a diverse group made up of 22 different nationalities, speaking 17 different languages. Headquartered in London we also have offices in Leeds and Cape Town.
The Role:
Red Badger is looking for a Databricks Architect to join our Data & AI practice in Leeds. This is a delivery-focused role: you'll work directly with clients and Red Badger consultants, from all cross-functional disciplines, to design complex technical solutions as an output from the discovery phase, and then lead a team of data engineers to build the solution through to production. You'll work closely with the Director, Data & AI, and partner on pre-sales and proposals to add technical credibility and deepen our client partnerships. You love solving complex problems, and customer value is your north star. You are comfortable consulting with technology stakeholders outside of your team. You are a technology polyglot, and an evangelist for agile ways of working.
Day to day, you will spend roughly half of your time hands-on, pairing with data engineers on the team, and helping them pick the right design to solve the problem. In the other half, you’ll be supporting the other functions (delivery, product, software engineering) and our clients with decisions impacted by the technical strategy of the project and providing support and line management to data engineers on your team.
Key Responsibilities:
- Discipline Expertise and Leadership: Technology breadth: Deep, production-grade experience across AWS &/or Azure native services, with expert-level Databricks and/or Snowflake and an Agile delivery mindset.
- Storage & Lakehouse: RDS, DynamoDB, S3, SageMaker Lakehouse.
- Processing & ETL: Glue, EMR, Athena, CDC/DMS, DataBrew, Kinesis, dbt.
- Data management & metadata: Lake Formation, Glue Data Catalog, SageMaker Catalog / DataZone.
- AI: Bedrock (including AgentCore) and SageMaker AI.
- Storage & lakehouse: SQL, PostgreSQL, Cosmos, Blob, Data Lake, OneLake, Fabric Warehouse.
- Processing & ETL: Fabric Data Factory, Data Factory CDC, Fabric/Synapse Spark, ADF, Synapse Pipelines, Fabric, dbt.
- Data management & metadata: Purview.
- AI: Foundry (including Agent Service), ML.
- On AWS, you're fluent across the core services.
- On Azure, you’re fluent across the core services.
- Data Product mentality: You build Data Products where every pipeline and dataset is discoverable, addressable and secure by design.
- Data capabilities: You know the full data lifecycle, from discovery, storage, pipelines, ETL and streaming to data quality, governance, metadata management and cataloguing, through to advanced analytics and decision-making.
- AI: You understand how AI is built and deployed in modern data platforms (Databricks, Snowflake) and cloud-native services like Amazon Bedrock, with enough depth to guide teams and advise clients, spanning LLMs and SLMs, agentic automation, Human in the Loop and MLOps.
- Data Architecture Design: You know when to use RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), Serverless, DWH models, Data Mesh, Data Fabric, Medallion and Data Products.
- Hands-on mindset: Fluent in the language of data, whether SQL, Python, PySpark, R or Scala. Open formats including Parquet, Iceberg and JSON.
Agile Ways of Working:
- Run and contribute to agile ceremonies, helping to shape and improve the agile process.
- Work with the project’s delivery manager and product owner to lead the team in delivering high-quality digital products.
- Lead and support your peers in technical conversations.
- Be an advocate for lean development, building for what is required now.
- Pairing with other members of the team, including designers.
Consulting with Clients:
- Own the relationship with the client’s technical stakeholders.
- Proactively engage with clients to shape and move the project forward, including giving updates on the delivery progress and highlighting potential technical blockers.
- Upskilling and embedding modern data practices in client teams where necessary.
Leadership & Influence:
- Data Leadership: A proven track record of managing and inspiring teams, navigating enterprise-scale problems and turning them into opportunities for clients.
- People-first leadership: You guide, mentor and grow your team, bring the Red Badger culture with you, and build effective, high-trust teams where everyone is heard and valued.
- Stakeholder Artistry: You are a master of client-facing delivery. You can translate complex data concepts into business value, managing multi-vendor environments with a focus on long-term partnership.
- Designing for People and Purpose: Your expertise goes beyond just building scalable architectures; you design systems with a focus on delivering value. You ensure that your extensible and scalable solutions are implemented because they consistently meet the evolving needs of both the business and its users.
Your experience:
It’d be great if you:
- Quality Advocate: You take pride in the integrity of your work, championing quality assurance and performance tuning so the data solutions we build are robust, reliable and respected.
- Industry Stewardship: A lifelong learner who keeps a pulse on industry standards and best practice.
- Partnership Focus: You build strong relationships with technology partners, established or new, to deliver the best outcomes for clients.
- You care deeply about high-quality work that delivers real value.
- You're comfortable with ambiguity and solving complex problems collaboratively.
- You bring strong expertise in your craft, alongside a willingness to keep learning.
- You communicate clearly and build trust fast with clients, data engineering leaders and data and software engineers.
- You're pragmatic, adaptable, outcome-focused and low-ego in multidisciplinary teams.
- You lead with a people-first attitude, helping others grow and making sure people are heard, valued and set up to thrive.
It’d be amazing if you can also:
- Negotiate SLAs and SLOs with the business and supporting teams.
- Help shape and resourcing technical teams.
- Articulate commercial objectives into a technical strategy.
- Show a track record of owning the tech leadership on complex data projects, setting the technical vision for the project and managing technical stakeholders.
- Coach and line manage data engineers and data delivery individuals who are starting their line management journey.
- Be a part of the public face of the company in media and at meetups, conferences, etc.
Data Architect, Databricks - Contract in Leeds employer: Red Badger
Red Badger is an exceptional employer located in the vibrant Greater London area, offering a dynamic work culture that prioritises innovation and collaboration. Employees benefit from a strong focus on professional development, with ample opportunities for growth and advancement while working on cutting-edge projects. The company's commitment to agile methodologies and continuous improvement ensures that team members are empowered to make impactful contributions in a supportive environment.
StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫
We think this is how you could land Data Architect, Databricks - Contract in Leeds
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We think you need these skills to ace Data Architect, Databricks - Contract in Leeds
Some tips for your application 🫡
Highlight Your Data Projects:When applying for a temporary data science role at Red Badger, make sure to showcase any relevant projects you've worked on. Whether it's a personal project, an academic undertaking, or contributions to an open-source initiative, detailing these experiences can really set you apart and demonstrate your practical skills.
Emphasise Your Analytical Skills:In your CV and cover letter, focus on the specific analytical skills that are key to data science. Mention any experience with statistical tools, programming languages like Python or R, and data visualisation software. Don't forget to include any certifications that may bolster your expertise!
Show Your Flexibility:Since this is a temporary role, it's important to convey your adaptability and willingness to learn. In your cover letter to Red Badger, emphasise how quickly you can get up to speed with new tools or projects. Highlight any previous experiences where you've had to adjust to new environments or challenges.
Craft a Unique Data-Driven Cover Letter:Instead of the usual generic cover letter, spice it up with some data! Maybe you’ve improved a process by 20% in a past role or cleaned a dataset with over a million entries. Use these stats to your advantage to grab Red Badger’s attention and show the tangible impact of your work.
How to prepare for a job interview at Red Badger
✨Showcase Your Analytical Skills
For a data science gig, it's crucial to demonstrate your analytical abilities. Be ready to discuss previous projects and the methodologies you used. Think about how you can quantify your impact—did your analysis improve efficiency or save costs? These are the stories that will stick with interviewers at Red Badger.
✨Brush Up on Technical Skills
You might face technical questions on tools relevant to data science, like Python, R, or SQL. Prepare to solve a problem live—perhaps they'll ask you to write a simple query or code snippet. It’s cool to talk about them, but we need to show we can do it in practice, especially in a temporary role where quick results matter.
✨Highlight Your Adaptability
Since this is a temporary position, emphasise your ability to learn quickly and adapt to new tools or workflows. Share examples of how you've thrived in fast-paced environments before, and how you can hit the ground running at Red Badger.
✨Prepare a Portfolio of Your Work
Bring your portfolio to the table—showcase projects where you've leveraged data science techniques to solve problems. Whether it’s a GitHub repository or a set of case studies, having tangible examples of your work will help you stand out and show what you bring to the team at Red Badger.
