Data Platform Engineer, Senior Staff
Technology, Data & Digital · Data, AI & Analytics · Data Engineering · DevOps · Software Engineering
In short
Qualcomm is hiring a Senior Staff Data Platform Engineer to design, build, and operate a modern data platform centered around Databricks Lakehouse. This hands-on role requires strong system design, platform innovation, and execution skills, with responsibilities including architecture, implementation, reliability, security, and cost optimization. The position demands full-time onsite work in San Diego, CA or Boulder, CO.
Responsibilities
- Design and build scalable, distributed data platform systems.
- Own Databricks workspace architecture, governance, and lifecycle management.
- Implement infrastructure as code using Terraform/Terramate.
- Build and support end-to-end data pipelines, from ingestion to analytics and ML.
- Develop and maintain CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure, data pipelines, notebooks, SQL, and ML artifacts.
- Operate and optimize Amazon EKS clusters supporting data workloads.
- Define and monitor SLIs/SLOs for platform reliability and data quality.
- Drive innovation and continuous improvement across platform architecture and tooling.
- Lead incident response, on-call rotations, and blameless post-mortems.
- Implement strong security, compliance, and governance controls.
- Mentor engineers and influence platform standards and best practices.
Requirements
- 7+ years of IT-related work experience with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Information Systems or a related field, OR 9+ years of IT-related work experience without a Bachelor’s degree.
- 5+ years of work experience with programming (e.g., Java, Python).
- 3+ years of work experience with SQL or NoSQL Databases.
- 3+ years of work experience with Data Structures and algorithms.
- Proven experience designing complex, distributed data systems end-to-end.
- Strong system design skills across cloud infrastructure, data pipelines, storage, governance, and observability.
- Ability to evaluate and communicate architectural trade-offs (scalability, reliability, cost, security, operability).
- 8+ years building and operating large-scale cloud platforms.
- 5+ years in Data Platform, DevOps, SRE, or DataOps roles.
- Expert-level experience with AWS, including networking, IAM, security, and multi-account environments.
- Strong hands-on experience with Databricks Lakehouse Platform, including Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, and MLflow.
- Experience owning Databricks workspace architecture and governance.
- Deep experience with Terraform/Terramate (or similar IaC tools).
- Proven experience building CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Jenkins).
- Advanced Python and Bash scripting skills.
- Hands-on experience managing Amazon EKS clusters and Helm deployments.
- Experience defining and operating SLIs/SLOs for platform reliability and data quality.
- Strong understanding of cloud security best practices.
- Experience supporting SOX, GDPR, or regulated environments.
- AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional (or equivalent experience).
- Ability to work independently and mentor team members.
- Strong communication skills to explain complex system designs to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Desired Qualifications
- Demonstrated innovation mindset, such as modernizing or simplifying legacy data platforms, introducing new architectural patterns or platform capabilities, or improving reliability, performance, or developer experience through design.
- Experience with Acceldata, OpenTelemetry, or data observability tools.
- Experience with Fivetran Hybrid / HVR or enterprise ingestion tools.
- Experience working with Hashicorp vault or similar secret management tools.
- Policy-as-code experience using OPA.
- Experience working with static Code analysis tool like Sonar.
- Experience with data lineage or metadata management tools.
- Databricks serverless compute optimization and cost management.
- Experience driving platform strategy across multiple teams distributed globally.
Benefits
- Competitive annual discretionary bonus program.
- Opportunity for annual RSU grants.
- Highly competitive benefits package designed to support success at work, at home, and at play.
- Access to detailed US benefits information.
Skills
DatabricksPythonSQLNoSQLTerraformTerramateCI/CDBashAmazon EKSHelmAWSUnity CatalogDelta LakeMLflowGitHub ActionsJenkinsOpenTelemetryFivetranHashicorp vaultOPASonar
#Data Platform#Databricks#Lakehouse#System Design#Platform Engineering#AWS#DevOps#SRE#DataOps#Terraform#CI/CD#EKS#SLI/SLO#Security#Governance#Mentorship
About Qualcomm
Enabling a world where everyone and everything can be intelligently connected.
Enabling a world where everyone and everything can be intelligently connected.\n\n
Company
QualcommJob Posted
3 days ago
Employment Type
Full Time
Work mode
On Site
Salary
US$161,600–242,400 / year
Hours per week
40
Experience Level
Senior
Locations
San Diego, United States of America
Boulder, United States of America
Qualification
Bachelor
Applicants
Be an early applicant