Databricks Platform Engineer

Salas O’Brien, an employee-owned engineering and professional services firm with a history dating back to 1975, is searching for a Databricks Platform Engineer to own the Databricks landscape from end to end. The company builds for impact, guided by values like inspiration, achievement, and a shared ownership of success, all with a focus on a sustainable future. This is a remote, United States–based role that suits someone who wants to shape a platform with long-term potential and real-world, measurable outcomes.

The role is hands-on and carries architectural authority, not a coordination duty. You’ll be accountable for daily operations and for long-range decisions that impact scalability, security, governance, and performance. If you relish partnering with data scientists, data engineers, analysts, and business stakeholders to design robust solutions, you’ll likely fit right in, and you’ll be rewarded with opportunities to grow your career in a company that prioritizes great total rewards.

For candidates who want to stay close to the technology while helping the organization scale responsibly, this role offers a clear path to influence, strong collaboration with IT infrastructure and security, and a chance to work on diverse projects across industries Salas O’Brien serves.

Owning the Databricks platform from end to end

You’ll administer the Databricks platform across multiple environments, putting guardrails in place and managing Unity Catalog, cluster policies, and budget controls that let teams move quickly without sacrificing consistency or control. Identity and access management will be central, including Microsoft Entra ID single sign-on, SCIM provisioning at the account level, service principals, and scalable access-control models. You’ll partner with IT Infrastructure and Security to shape the platform’s networking and security posture, covering customer-managed virtual private clouds, private connectivity, encryption, egress controls, audit logs, and system tables connected to enterprise monitoring tools.

Automation will be your constant companion, with infrastructure and workloads driven through code using Terraform, Databricks Asset Bundles, and CI/CD practices, avoiding manual production configuration whenever automation is practical. You’ll establish and maintain cost-governance practices, including tagging standards, business-unit showback, budget controls, and recommendations to trim unnecessary platform spend. Beyond operations, you’ll serve as a trusted architecture advisor to data scientists, data engineers, analysts, and business stakeholders before solutions are designed and deployed, providing current, practical recommendations that balance standards with business needs. You’ll also evaluate emerging platform capabilities and determine how they should be adopted within the organization, translating new capabilities into practical, usable patterns.

Databricks evolves quickly, and you’ll stay on top of platform releases and features such as serverless computing, Unity Catalog, Lakeflow, and other capabilities, translating them into pragmatic guidance rather than chasing hype. Your leadership will help the organization use modern, supportable patterns instead of older approaches.

What you’ll bring to the Databricks platform

• Profound, hands-on production experience administering Databricks in a cloud environment, with strong preference for AWS; significant Azure Databricks experience is also acceptable if there’s a credible path to AWS support
• Proven work designing and operating Unity Catalog across multiple workspaces
• Experience building catalog structures and access-control models that scale with a growing organization
• Experience linking Databricks with Microsoft Entra ID for SSO and SCIM provisioning
• Solid Terraform and CI/CD skills for infrastructure and platform management
• Familiarity with cloud networking concepts such as VPCs, private connectivity, encryption, egress controls, and related security-review processes
• Ability to partner with IT Infrastructure and Security, clearly communicating platform needs, following enterprise standards, and advocating constructively for architecture improvements
• Judgment to know when to follow default platform patterns and when organizational requirements call for a different solution
• Strong written and verbal communication skills

Salary, benefits and practical details

The base pay range for this position is $115,000 to $135,000 USD per year. Actual compensation will be determined based on several factors, including skills, experience, qualifications, geographic location, and internal equity. The role may also be eligible for performance-based bonuses, equity participation, and a comprehensive U.S.-based benefits package, including medical, dental, and vision insurance; a 401(k) with company match; paid time off and company holidays; wellness programs and employee-assistance resources; and professional development support.

Travel up to 20% may be required to support architecture reviews, security and governance discussions, business stakeholder engagement, and team collaboration. Salas O’Brien is an equal opportunity employer and will accommodate disability-related needs of applicants as required by law.

The company does not accept unsolicited resumes from external recruiters or staffing agencies. Salas O’Brien works only with approved partners who have been directly engaged by its Talent Acquisition team for a specific search; unsolicited submissions will not be eligible for placement fees.

Tips for applicants tackling this role

Lead with your Databricks leadership. Put a concise snapshot of your end-to-end Databricks administration on AWS (or Azure Databricks with a path to AWS) at the top of your resume, highlighting environments you’ve managed, Unity Catalog implementations, and your approach to governance and cost control.

Show how you prove you can do the must-haves. Include concrete examples of Unity Catalog in a multi-workspace setup, SSO/SCIM integrations with Entra ID, Terraform pipelines you’ve built, and your collaboration with IT Infrastructure and Security to meet enterprise standards while enabling business needs.

Prepare for interviews by sharing the trade-offs you’ve faced. Be ready to discuss security versus usability, platform-default decisions you stood behind or changed, and how you communicated those choices to non-technical stakeholders without jargon.

Ask a smart question about the road ahead. Inquire how the team evaluates adoption of new Databricks capabilities (like serverless options or Lakeflow), how cost governance is measured, and how standardization is pursued in a federated or multi-entity environment rather than through centralized mandates.