Principal Azure Databricks Platform Engineer

Principal Azure Databricks Platform Engineer
Syneos Health® is a leading fully-integrated life sciences services organization built to accelerate customer success. We partner with innovators at every point across the drug development and commercialization continuum, helping them navigate complexity, anticipate change and accelerate progress.
Every day we perform better because of how we work together, as one team, each the best at what we do. We bring together talented experts across a broad spectrum of business critical corporate functions. Every role plays an essential part in enabling our customers to achieve their goals. Our teams are agile, collaborative, and committed to delivering—for each other, for our customers, and ultimately for the people who rely on the services we support.
Discover what your 25,000 future colleagues already know:
Why Syneos Health
• We are passionate about developing our people, through career development and progression; supportive and engaged line management; technical and therapeutic area training; peer recognition and total rewards program.
• We are committed to building an inclusive culture – where you can authentically be yourself. Central to this is our purpose – Driven to Deliver – which captures the passion of our colleagues to show up each day and shape solutions that have the ability to dramatically impact someone’s life.
• We are continuously building the company we all want to work for and our customers want to work with. Why? Because we know that when we bring together smart colleagues from across the world, we can shape the future of healthcare, driving impact for customers and defining the pace of patient progress.
Job Responsibilities
Key Responsibilities:
1. Azure Databricks Platform Engineering & Administration
Lead the design, implementation, administration, and optimization of enterprise Azure Databricksenvironments across development, staging, and production.
Manage Databricks account-level and workspace-level configurations, including identity,permissions, networking, compute, workspace settings, and governance.
Establish and enforce enterprise Databricks architecture, administration standards, platformsecurity policies, and operational best practices.
Design and manage compute policies, SQL warehouses, serverless capabilities, jobs compute,workload isolation, and resource utilization.
Troubleshoot complex platform issues involving performance, configuration, permissions,networking, availability, and integration.
Implement platform monitoring, audit logging, cost observability, and proactive operationalcontrols.
Enable multi-team and multi-data-product environments with appropriate security, isolation, andaccess boundaries.
2. Databricks Automation, Terraform & DevOps Develop and maintain reusable Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using theDatabricks TerraformProviderand Azure Terraform Provider.
Automate Databricks account and workspace administration, Unity Catalog resources, permissions,compute policies, and other platform configurations
ImplementDatabricks Declarative Automation Bundles (formerly Databricks Asset Bundles /DAB)
for standardized deployment and management of Databricks resources.
Establish reusable Terraform modules, deployment templates, CI/CD pipelines, and automatedenvironment provisioning.
Develop automation using Databricks CLI, REST APIs, Python, PowerShell, or other scriptingtechnologies.
Implement Git-based deployment practices, configuration management, infrastructure driftdetection, and automated policy enforcement.
Drive consistent, repeatable, and auditable deployments across environments.
3. Unity Catalog, Governance & Platform Security
Lead enterprise implementation and administration of Databricks Unity Catalog includingcatalogs, schemas, permissions, external locations, storage credentials, and governance policies.
Define scalable data access models using Entra ID groups, service principals, managed identities,and role-based access controls.
Establish standards for data product isolation, least-privilege access, environment separation,ownership, and secure data sharing.
Implement and enhance auditing, lineage, data discovery, and platform governance capabilities.
Work with enterprise governance and security teams to integrate Databricks with broader datagovernance solutions such as Microsoft Purview.
Ensure compliance with organizational security, privacy, and data management standards.
4. Databricks Platform Modernization & Emerging Capabilities
Continuously evaluate and introduce new Databricks capabilities to improve enterprise platformfunctionality, developer experience, scalability, and cost efficiency.
Lead platform enablement and establish operational patterns for capabilities such as:
Unity Gateway / AI Gateway:
Governed AI model access, routing, access controls,monitoring, and cost management.
Lakebase:
Managed operational database services, provisioning, security, and integrationpatterns.
Lakeflow:
Platform enablement, orchestration capabilities, deployment standards, andoperational governance.
Delta Sharing:
Secure internal and external data-sharing capabilities.
Databricks Apps and AI capabilities:
Platform services and operational standardssupporting AI and application workloads.
Assess platform feature maturity, architectural fit, security implications, and operational readinessbefore enterprise adoption.
Develop reference architectures, reusable platform components, and standardized onboardingpatterns for engineering teams.
5. Azure Infrastructure, Security & Integration
Design and manage the Azure infrastructure supporting enterprise Databricks environments,including networking, storage, identity, and security integrations.
Demonstrate strong hands-on expertise in Azure networking, private endpoints, VNets, DNS, AzureData Lake Storage, Key Vault, and Entra ID.
Principal Azure Databricks Platform Engineer.md 2026-10-12
Implement secure connectivity and integration between Databricks and enterprise Azure services.
Design and enforce infrastructure security, high availability, backup, disaster recovery, monitoring,and cost optimization practices.
Collaborate with enterprise cloud, security, networking, and operations teams to maintain reliable,compliant platform services.
6. Technical Leadership, Mentorship & Platform Standards
Serve as a technical authority for Azure Databricks platform engineering and administration.
Lead complex technical initiatives from architecture and design through implementation andoperational handover.
Mentor engineers through design reviews, technical coaching, knowledge sharing, and hands-onproblem-solving.
Establish engineering standards, reusable architectural patterns, operational runbooks, andplatform best practices.
Conduct technical assessments, identify platform gaps, and drive continuous improvementinitiatives.
Collaborate with data engineers, solution architects, security teams, and business stakeholders tounderstand platform requirements and deliver scalable solutions.
Demonstrate strong ownership, independent decision-making, and the ability to influence technicaldirection across teams.
Required Qualifications
Experience
8+ years of relevant experience in cloud engineering, platform engineering, infrastructure automation, or enterprise data platform technologies.
Strong hands-on experience with Microsoft Azure, including infrastructure architecture,networking, storage, identity, and security.
Significant hands-on production experience administering and engineering Azure Databricksplatforms preferably 4+ years.
Proven experience implementing Databricks platform capabilities beyond basic workspacecreation, cluster provisioning, or notebook execution.
Demonstrated experience leading technical initiatives, mentoring engineers, and establishingplatform engineering standards.
Essential Technical Skills
Azure Databricks Platform
Advanced Databricks administration, account and workspace configuration, compute governance,operational troubleshooting, and platform performance optimization.
Deep understanding of Unity Catalog architecture, permissions, governance, security, and resourceadministration.
Experience with Databricks SQL warehouses, serverless compute, workload management, and costoptimization.
Strong knowledge of Databricks security models, service principals, identity management, andenterprise deployment patterns.
Infrastructure as Code & Automation
Hands-on experience with the Databricks Terraform Provider, including management ofDatabricks-specific resources.
Strong Terraform skills covering reusable modules, state management, environment configuration,and automation.
Experience with Declarative Automation Bundles (Databricks Asset Bundles), Databricks CLI, APIs,and CI/CD.
Proficiency with Git-based engineering practices and automated deployments using GitHubActions, Azure DevOps, or similar tools.
Scripting and automation experience using Python, PowerShell, or Bash.
Microsoft Azure
Strong knowledge of Azure networking, private endpoints, DNS, ADLS Gen2, Key Vault, and EntraID.
Experience securing and operating Azure-hosted enterprise data platforms.
Familiarity with Azure monitoring, logging, infrastructure governance, and disaster recoverypractices.
Leadership & Communication
Prove