Databricks Architect

Databricks Architect

Location: Houston, TX | Type: Contract to Hire (6 months) | Setup: Mostly Remote, some onsite in Houston | Experience: 8+ years | Pay: $100-$130/hr

About the Role

We're hiring a Databricks Architect to design and stand up lakehouse platforms that enterprise teams will actually run their business on. You'll own the architecture end to end, from ingestion and medallion design to governance, cost controls, and the handoff that lets a client's own team operate what you built.

You'll join a boutique data and AI consultancy that helps organizations simplify, master, and scale their data capabilities on modern platforms. The team is small and senior, so your decisions carry weight from day one. Most of the work is remote, with periodic onsite time at the Houston office or with a Houston-based client when the engagement calls for it.

This role starts as a 6-month contract with a clear path to full-time. If you're the architect people call when a Databricks rollout has stalled halfway through, you'll feel at home here.

What You'll Do

• Design lakehouse architectures on Databricks, including medallion layering, Delta Lake strategy, and workspace topology
• Lead client-facing architecture sessions and translate business requirements into a platform plan people can execute against
• Build and tune ingestion and transformation pipelines using Spark, Delta Live Tables, and Databricks Workflows
• Stand up Unity Catalog for governance: access controls, lineage, data classification, and cross-workspace sharing
• Set standards for CI/CD, infrastructure as code, and environment promotion so the platform stays maintainable after launch
• Keep an eye on cost. Cluster policies, compute sizing, and job optimization are part of the job, not an afterthought
• Plan and run migrations from legacy warehouses and on-prem Hadoop or SQL Server environments
• Mentor client engineers and document decisions so the platform outlives the engagement
• Prepare data foundations for ML and GenAI use cases, including feature pipelines and model serving patterns

Qualifications

Core Experience

• 8+ years in data engineering or data architecture, with at least 3 years designing production solutions on Databricks
• Deep hands-on skill with Apache Spark (PySpark and Spark SQL), Delta Lake, and performance tuning at scale
• Real experience implementing Unity Catalog and data governance in an enterprise setting
• Strong SQL and Python

Cloud and Platform

• Production experience on Azure, AWS, or GCP (Azure strongly preferred)
• Infrastructure as code with Terraform or similar, plus CI/CD using Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, or equivalent
• Comfort with streaming patterns such as Structured Streaming, Kafka, or Event Hubs

Consulting and Communication

• A track record of leading architecture conversations directly with client stakeholders, both technical and business
• Ability to scope work, push back on bad requirements, and explain tradeoffs in plain language
• Must be able to travel onsite in Houston as needed

Nice to Have

• Databricks certifications (Data Engineer Professional or Solutions Architect)
• Experience with MLflow, Mosaic AI, or GenAI workloads on Databricks
• Background in energy, industrial, or other data-heavy Houston industries

Why Join Us

You'll be working with a lean team of data practitioners who care more about platforms that hold up in production than slide decks that look good in a steering committee. There's no layer of management between you and the client, which means your architecture calls get made and shipped, not diluted.

The contract-to-hire structure gives both sides six months of real work together before committing. For a senior architect who wants ownership, visibility, and a seat at the table as the practice grows, that's a good place to start.