Senior/Lead Azure Data Engineer (Contract 3 Months)
Location:Remote (U.S.) core overlap withCST
Engagement:Contract only(1099/C2C) no C2H for this role
Start:Immediate Duration:3 months (extension possible)
Comp:Competitive hourly rate (DOE)
About Smartbridge
Smartbridge simplifies business transformation acrossApp Development Automation Data & Analytics and Modernization. We build production systems for clients inEnergy Life Sciences and Food & Beverage.
The Opportunity
Our project needs asenior/leadwho can bothdesignandbuildmodern Azure data platformssomeone withstrong codingin T-SQL and Python/PySparkarchitectural judgment anddeep database chops(modeling performance reliability). Because this iscontract-only fit must be tight and immediate impact.
What Youll Own (Architecture Build)
- Architecture:Define the target-state Azure data architecture (ingestion orchestration storage zones serving patterns) security/networking boundaries cost/perf tradeoffs and promotion strategy (DevTestProd).
- Pipelines & Code:Implement robust ELT/ETL withADF/Synapse Pipelines(parameters reusable templates CI/CD). Hands-on inT-SQLandPython/PySparkfor transformations utilities and tests.
- Database Excellence:Physical/semantic modelingpartitioningcolumnstorestrategies statistics managementquery plananalysisindexdesign concurrency & transaction isolation workload management.
- Observability & Reliability:SLA/SLO definitionsAzure Monitor / Log Analytics / App Insightsdashboards and alerts; error handling retries/backoff idempotency CDC and schema drift strategies.
- Security & Governance:RBAC Key Vault managed identities private endpoints/VNet data masking patterns; document data contracts and access patterns.
- Leadership:Code reviews PR discipline mentoring and crisp documentation/runbooks for client handoff.
Must-Have (Senior-Level) Experience- 812 yearsin data engineering (recentAzurefocus).
- Expert withADF(linked services datasets IRsincluding self-hosted)Synapse(SQL pools/serverless pipelines) andADLS/Blob.
- T-SQL: advanced query tuning execution plan analysis windowing TVFs/stored procs temp tables vs CTE tradeoffs cardinality estimator know-how.
- Python/PySpark: production data transforms packaging and testing.
- CI/CD: Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions (multi-stage releases approvals infra data deployments).
- Proven delivery ofproduction-gradeplatforms at scale (TB-level data strict SLAs).
Not a fit:Primarily BI/reporting backgrounds without strong pipeline/build DB performance experience.
Nice to Have- Designed and implemented robust data validation procedures to verify the completeness of data transfers ensuring all records were successfully migrated and proactively triggering alerts in cases of discrepancies.
- Experience with working with large SQL tables (100 million rows)
- IaC (Bicep/Terraform) for data resources.
- Event-driven integration (Service Bus/Event Grid CDC tooling).
- Certs:DP-203 or AZ-204 are a plus.
Required Experience:
Senior IC