Databricks Administrator

Job Title:

Databricks Administrator

Location:

Washington, District of Columbia

Type:
Contract

Contractor Work Model:
Onsite

The Enterprise Data Platform (EDP) empowers the Board to confidently use trusted, standardized, and well‑governed data to drive insight and innovation.

Databricks Administrator is the hands‑on technical owner of the agency’s Databricks platform supporting EDP. This role is accountable for platform operations, security, and governance configuration end‑to‑end—ensuring the environment is compliant, reliable, cost‑controlled, and enables secure analytics and AI/ML workloads at scale.

• The candidate shall possess the knowledge and skills set forth in the Technical Services BOA, Section 3.5.6.1 for labor category Intermediate Cloud Systems Engineer.
• Hands‑on experience administering Databricks (workspace administration, clusters/compute policies, jobs, SQL warehouses, repos, runtime management) and expertise using Databricks CLI.
• Strong Unity Catalog administration: metastores; catalogs/schemas; grants; service principals; external locations; storage credentials; governed storage access.
• Identity & Access Management proficiency: SSO concepts, SCIM provisioning, group‑based RBAC, service principals, least‑privilege patterns.
• Security fundamentals: secrets management, secure connectivity, audit logging, access monitoring, and evidence‑ready operations.
• Cloud platform expertise (AWS): IAM roles/policies, object storage security patterns, networking basics (VPC concepts), logging/monitoring integration.
• Automation skills: scripting and/or IaC using Terraform/CLI/REST APIs for repeatable configuration and environment promotion.
• Experience implementing data governance controls (classification/tagging, lineage/metadata integrations) in partnership with governance teams.
• CI/CD practices for jobs/notebooks/config promotion across SDLC environments.
• Understanding of lakehouse concepts (e.g., Delta, table lifecycle management, separation of storage/compute).
• SQL proficiency and data engineering fundamentals for troubleshooting query performance issues, understanding ETL/ELT workflow patterns, and debugging data‑pipeline failures; basic Python/Scala familiarity for notebook/code issue diagnosis.
• Experience with compliance and regulatory frameworks (FedRAMP, HIPAA, SOC2, or similar) including implementation of data residency requirements, retention policies, and audit‑ready evidence collection.
• Hands‑on experience with AWS security and networking services including Private Link, Secrets Manager/Systems Manager integration, Cloud Watch/Cloud Trail integration, S3 bucket policies, cross‑account access patterns, and KMS encryption key management.
• Experience administering Databricks serverless compute, Workspace Git integrations (Git Lab), Databricks Asset Bundles (DABs) for deployment automation, and modern workspace features supporting Dev Ops workflows.
• SLA/SLO management and stakeholder communication skills; ability to define platform service levels, produce operational reports, translate technical issues to business stakeholders, and manage vendor relationships (Databricks account teams).

• Bachelor’s degree in a related field or equivalent practical experience.
• 7+ years in cloud/data platform administration and operations, including 4+ years supporting Databricks or similar platforms.
• Databricks Platform Administrator / Databricks AWS Platform Architect.
• Databricks Certified Data Engineer Associate / Professional.
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate or Professional.

• Administer Databricks account and work spaces across SDLC environments; standardize configuration, naming, and operational patterns.
• Configure and maintain clusters/compute, job compute, SQL warehouses, runtime versions, libraries, repos, and workspace settings.
• Implement platform monitoring/alerting, operational dashboards, and health checks; maintain runbooks and operational procedures.
• Provide Tier 2/3 operational support: troubleshoot incidents, perform root‑cause analysis, and drive…