Full Time Databricks Data Engineer Jobs in Virginia

Job Summary:
Steampunk, Inc. is a Change Agent in the Federal contracting industry, and they are seeking a Principal Data Solution Architect / Lead Data Architect to serve as the senior-most technical authority for end-to-end data architectures and cloud data platforms. This role involves driving architectural strategy, guiding engineering teams, and ensuring data platforms support analytics and AI capabilities.
Responsibilities:
• Serve as the chief architect for data platform modernization, designing enterprise data ecosystems including lakehouse architectures, data mesh/fabric patterns, domain modeling, and multi-cloud data strategies.
• Translate mission and business needs into actionable data architecture roadmaps, reference architectures, and solution blueprints.
• Architect robust ingestion, transformation, and serving layers using a blend of batch, streaming, CDC, API-based, and event-driven patterns.
• Lead end-to-end data modeling strategy, including canonical data models, semantic layers, MDM architectures, metadata systems, and AI/ML-aligned feature modeling.
• Partner with Data Engineering, Data Science, AI/ML Engineering, and LLMOps / MLOps teams to ensure data platforms support analytics, ML, RAG systems, and advanced automation use cases.
• Define and enforce enterprise data standards : schema evolution, data contracts, quality frameworks, lineage expectations, observability, data zones, and Zero Trust data-access policies.
• Drive platform engineering decisions including storage optimization, cluster sizing, compute orchestration, network design, and cost-performance tradeoffs.
• Guide selection and adoption of platform technologies such as Databricks, Snowflake, Redshift, Synapse, BigQuery , lakehouse engines, metadata platforms, and orchestration tools.
• Oversee architectural governance, including design reviews, performance evaluations, cloud readiness assessments, and alignment with enterprise cybersecurity and compliance requirements.
• Serve as a senior advisor to client executives , framing modernization strategies, defining investment pathways, and articulating value realization for enterprise data initiatives.
• Mentor Data Engineers, Data Architects, and cross-functional technical staff, strengthening architectural maturity across programs.
• Develop reusable frameworks, architectural patterns, playbooks, and internal accelerators that improve consistency and reduce delivery time across engagements.
• Stay current with emerging trends in cloud-native data ecosystems, metadata automation, distributed compute , AI-ready data architectures, and federal data regulations.
• You will contribute to the growth of our AI & Data Exploitation Practice!
Qualifications:
Required:
• Ability to hold a position of public trust or higher clearance as required.
• Bachelor’s, Master’s, or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Information Systems, Cloud Architecture, or a related technical field.
• 10+ years of professional experience designing enterprise-scale data solutions, with significant architectural leadership.
• Expert-level knowledge of modern data architectures including lakehouse, data mesh, data fabric, MDM, event-driven architectures, and domain-driven design.
• Deep experience with cloud-native data ecosystems across AWS, Azure, or GCP—including storage, compute, orchestration, serverless, virtualization, containerization, and security services.
• Mastery of distributed data processing frameworks (e.g., Spark, Databricks, Flink, Kafka, Synapse, Dataflow) and strong proficiency in SQL and Python.
• Proven ability to design end-to-end ingestion pipelines, transformation logic, metadata systems, feature stores, and data serving layers optimized for analytics and AI workloads.
• Understanding of enterprise data governance, including cataloging, lineage, privacy, tagging, Zero Trust access patterns, and compliance requirements.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to influence senior stakeholders, justify architectural decisions, and translate complex concepts into actionable insights.
• Demonstrated success mentoring technical staff, leading architecture reviews, and guiding multi-team delivery across complex modernization programs.
• Experience collaborating with Data Science, AI/ML, and MLOps teams to ensure data architectures support scalable model development and operationalization.
Preferred:
• Preferred certifications (highly relevant):
• + AWS Data Analytics Specialty
• + AWS Solutions Architect – Professional
• + Azure Solutions Architect Expert
• + Databricks Data Engineer Professional
• + Google Professional Data Engineer
• + Snowflake SnowPro Advanced Architect
• + TOGAF or cloud architecture frameworks
• Local to Washington, DC metro area
Company:
Steampunk is anchored by a startup culture with a customer-centered delivery approach, we put our Federal government clients in the center of everything we design, develop, and deliver to drive high-quality mission impacts and user experiences at speed. Founded in 2019, the company is headquartered in Washington, USA, with a team of 201-500 employees. The company is currently Growth Stage.