Job Title: Java Spark Engineer
Location: Berkeley Heights, NJ (5 days onsite - flexibility to support weekends)
Job Type: Contract
Experience: 7+ years Java development; 5+ years Apache Spark in production
Job Overview
Key Responsibilities
- Architect and build scalable, fault-tolerant data pipelines using Apache Spark (Java)
- Drive performance tuning: partitioning strategy, memory management, shuffle/skew optimization
- Mentor mid-level and junior engineers; act as technical escalation point
- Partner with product, analytics, and platform teams to translate requirements into scalable systems
- Own production reliability - incident response and root-cause analysis for pipeline failures
- Contribute to capacity planning and cost optimization for cluster infrastructure
Required Skills
- 7+ years professional Java development experience
- 5+ years hands-on Apache Spark in production environments
- Expert-level distributed systems knowledge: fault tolerance, data locality, shuffle mechanics, resource management
- Proven track record designing systems at terabyte+ scale
- Strong SQL and deep familiarity with columnar storage formats: Parquet, ORC, Avro, Delta Lake/Iceberg
- Experience with cluster managers: YARN, Kubernetes, cloud-managed Spark
- Proficiency with Apache Kafka
- Strong grasp of CI/CD, containerization, and infrastructure-as-code practices
Preferred Skills
- Experience with Apache Flink or other stream-processing frameworks
- Familiarity with data governance, lineage, and quality frameworks
- Experience with workflow orchestration at scale
- Background in system design for multi-tenant or multi-region data platforms
Location & Work Model
Berkeley Heights, NJ - fully onsite, 5 days per week. Candidates must be flexible to support weekend operations when needed.
Engagement Details
5 openings available. Contract engagement. Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field required.