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

We are seeking an experienced Principal Azure Databricks Platform Engineer to lead the engineering, administration, automation, governance, and continuous modernization of our enterprise data platform built on Microsoft Azure and Azure Databricks.

This is a senior, hands-on technical leadership role requiring deep expertise in Databricks platformcapabilities, beyond basic workspace provisioning or cluster management. The ideal candidate has aproven track record of operating enterprise-scale Databricks environments, implementing platformengineering best practices, building reusable automation, and enabling data engineering, analytics, andAI teams through secure, scalable, and governed platform services.

The successful candidate will combine strong Azure infrastructure expertise with advanced Databricksplatform administration, proactively evaluate new platform capabilities, establish technical standards, andmentor engineers while driving platform modernization initiatives

This role focuses on engineering and operating the data platform, rather than developing ETLpipelines or implementing individual data engineering solutions

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

Proven ability to independently own complex technical solutions and make architectural decisions.

Experience mentoring engineers and providing technical direction to teams.

Ability to translate enterprise requirements into practical platform engineering solutions.

Strong troubleshooting, analytical, communication, and stakeholder management skills.

Preferred Qualifications

Hands-on experience with newer Databricks capabilities such as Unity Gateway / AI Gateway,Lakebase, Lakeflow, Delta Sharing, Databricks Apps, or AI platform services.

Experience implementing platform governance, automation, or reusable deployment frameworksfor large enterprise Databricks environments.

Experience with Databricks system tables, audit logs, platform observability, and FinOps.

Experience designing multi-tenant or data-mesh-oriented enterprise data platforms.

Familiarity with Azure-based data engineering and orchestration services such as Azure DataFactory, without necessarily being a hands-on ETL developer.

Relevant Databricks, Terraform, or Microsoft Azure certifications.

What Success Looks Like

The successful candidate will be able to:

Independently own and improve the enterprise Databricks platform rather than relying on others forplatform administration decisions

Create standardized and automated approaches for platform configuration, Unity Cataloggovernance, deployments, and security.

Identify architectural and operational gaps and proactively implement improvements.

Enable engineering teams to adopt Databricks capabilities through secure, reusable, self-serviceplatform services.

Introduce and operationalize new Databricks features in alignment with enterprise requirements.

Serve as a trusted technical leader who mentors the engineering team and drives engineeringexcellence.

Get to know Syneos Health

Over the past 5 years, we have worked with 94% of all Novel FDA Approved Drugs, 95% of EMA Authorized Products and over 200 Studies across 73,000 Sites and 675,000+ Trial patients.

No matter what your role is, you’ll take the initiative and challenge the status quo with us in a highly competitive and ever-changing environment. Learn more about Syneos Health.
 

http://www.syneoshealth.com

Additional Information

Tasks, duties, and responsibilities as listed in this job description are not exhaustive.  The Company, at its sole discretion and with no prior notice, may assign other tasks, duties, and job responsibilities. Equivalent experience, skills, and/or education will also be considered so qualifications of incumbents may differ from those listed in the Job Description. The Company, at its sole discretion, will determine what constitutes as equivalent to the qualifications described above.   Further, nothing contained herein should be construed to create an employment contract.  Occasionally, required skills/experiences for jobs are expressed in brief terms. Any language contained herein is intended to fully comply with all obligations imposed by the legislation of each country in which it operates, including the implementation of the EU Equality Directive, in relation to the recruitment and employment of its employees.  The Company is committed to compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, including the provision of reasonable accommodations, when appropriate, to assist employees or applicants to perform the essential functions of the job.