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# Senior data Engineer 2 (contract)

- **Company:** Microsoft
- **Location:** Atherstone, UK
- **Experience:** Expert
- **Salary:** £66,300.0 - £74,620.0
- **Contract:** Temporary contract
- **Skills:** Code Review, Continuous Integration, Data Architecture, Information Engineering, Data Infrastructure, Data Integrity, Monitoring of Systems, Python (Programming Language), Power BI, Standard Sql, Data Streaming, Tableau (Software), Cloud Platform System, Azure Data Factory, Apache Spark, Git, Databricks
- **Published:** September 1, 2026
- **Apply:** https://uk.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=ef3bc239f5f4c3e4

## About the Role

* Azure Databricks (expert level)
 * Azure Data Factory (ADF)
 * SQL
 * Python
 * Apache Spark
 * Cloud platform optimisation and cost reduction
 * Data platform migrations or modernization programmes
 * Git and modern code review practices
 * CI/CD implementation
 * Monitoring, observability, and incident management

Experience

 * Led delivery of production-grade Azure data platforms.
 * Successfully delivered large migration or transformation projects.
 * Experience making measurable improvements in performance, reliability, and cloud costs.
 * Comfortable operating as a technical lead rather than only an individual contributor.

Nice-to-Have Skills

 * Unity Catalog migration experience
 * Gaming industry experience
 * Game telemetry / event-streaming data experience
 * Power BI
 * Tableau
 * Lakehouse architecture expertise
 * Data reliability engineering (DRE) background

Experience Level Guidance

Ideal Level

 * 8-15+ years in Data Engineering / Data Platform Engineering
 * 3-5+ years working heavily with Azure Databricks
 * Previous Technical Lead, Lead Data Engineer, Principal Data Engineer, or Data Platform Architect experience

## Description

* Lead the technical delivery of a data platform modernization programme.
 * Own the design and execution of Unity Catalog migration across key data domains.
 * Define and implement modern orchestration patterns, replacing legacy workflows.
 * Improve performance and reduce costs across Databricks clusters, Spark jobs, storage, and scheduling.
 * Establish engineering standards for:
 + CI/CD
 + Testing
 + Monitoring and observability
 + Data quality
 + Production readiness
 * Review architecture decisions and critical pull requests.
 * Mentor engineers and provide technical guidance.
 * Work closely with platform, product, analytics, and business stakeholders.
 * Deliver migrations with minimal business disruption.