Databricks Center of Excellence Technical Leader

Perficient • Creve Coeur, MO

5d • $103,584 - $209,800 • Remote

About The Position

We currently have a career opportunity for a Databricks Center of Excellence Technical Leader to join our team located in the United States. The Databricks Center of Excellence Technical Leader is the senior technical authority for the Databricks practice. This role defines the technical vision, architecture standards, engineering methods, and quality bar for Databricks solutions while helping shape strategic client opportunities and grow a high-performing technical community. The role is intentionally focused on Databricks technical leadership. It does not own every data, integration, analytics, or AI discipline. Instead, it partners across those disciplines to ensure Databricks solutions are secure, scalable, cost-effective, differentiated, and aligned to client outcomes. Additionally, you will foster an engaging colleague culture that inspires strong team and individual performance, in line with Perficient's People Promise.

Requirements

• 12+ years of experience in data engineering, platform engineering, solutions architecture, analytics engineering, or related technical disciplines.
• Demonstrated senior-level technical leadership across enterprise data platforms, with meaningful responsibility for architecture quality, standards, and team development.
• Deep hands-on Databricks experience, including production implementations rather than certification-only knowledge.
• Expertise in modern lakehouse architecture, data engineering, governance, analytics, AI/ML platform patterns, performance optimization, and cloud security.
• Experience designing and delivering enterprise-scale solutions across Azure, AWS, and/or Google Cloud.
• Strong consulting or professional services experience, including discovery, estimation, solution shaping, staffing considerations, delivery risk, and client dynamics.
• Proven pre-sales experience with executive presentations, architecture workshops, technical proposals, and complex solution design.
• Experience leading, mentoring, or managing senior architects and engineers.
• Executive presence and the ability to communicate complex architecture concepts to both C-level stakeholders and hands-on engineering teams.
• Strong written communication, technical storytelling, facilitation, and stakeholder influence skills.

Nice To Haves

• Databricks Professional certification, Databricks Champion recognition, or comparable evidence of advanced platform expertise.
• Experience with Mosaic AI, multi-agent orchestration, RAG, model evaluation, Vector Search, MLOps, LLMOps, and production AI systems.
• Proficient in leveraging AI technologies to drive innovation, support strategic initiatives, and enable data-driven decision-making.
• Possesses a strong understanding of AI capabilities, limitations, and ethical considerations.
• Experience establishing or scaling a technical Center of Excellence, platform practice, or architecture community.
• Industry depth in healthcare and life sciences, financial services, retail, manufacturing, automotive, energy, or utilities.
• Multi-cloud Databricks delivery experience.
• Conference presentations, technical publications, blogs, podcasts, community leadership, or other visible thought leadership.
• Experience collaborating directly with Databricks field, alliance, product, or engineering organizations.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute the technical strategy and roadmap for the Databricks Center of Excellence.
• Establish architecture principles, delivery patterns, engineering standards, and technical governance for Databricks engagements.
• Evaluate emerging Databricks capabilities and adjacent technologies, recommending adoption when they create measurable client or delivery value.
• Create mechanisms to reuse proven architectures, accelerators, code assets, and lessons learned across engagements.
• Partner with practice, alliance, industry, sales, and delivery leaders while retaining clear accountability for Databricks technical excellence.
• Lead architecture for complex enterprise Databricks solutions across data engineering, analytics, governance, AI/ML, and real-time use cases.
• Guide solution design across Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, Lakeflow, MLflow, Mosaic AI, Vector Search, Genie, Feature Store, Lakebase, and related platform capabilities.
• Lead architecture reviews, design sessions, technical risk assessments, and major system decisions.
• Define secure, scalable, high-performance, and cost-effective patterns across Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud.
• Champion DataOps, MLOps, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, automated testing, observability, data quality, privacy, and security by design.
• Remain sufficiently hands-on to lead technical spikes, proofs of concept, reference implementations, and resolution of critical architecture challenges.
• Serve as a trusted technical advisor to client executives, architects, and engineering leaders.
• Translate business objectives into Databricks platform strategies, modernization roadmaps, and implementable architectures.
• Lead technical discovery, feasibility assessment, solution shaping, estimation, architecture presentations, workshops, and proposal development.
• Partner with sales and account teams to strengthen technical credibility, reduce solution risk, and improve pursuit outcomes.
• Provide technical oversight for strategic engagements without becoming the day-to-day delivery manager for every project.
• Define practical standards for AI-assisted architecture, engineering, testing, code review, documentation, and delivery within the Databricks practice.
• Guide solution patterns for Mosaic AI, agent orchestration, retrieval-augmented generation, model evaluation, LLMOps, MLOps, and tool-use workflows.
• Build and govern reusable agentic delivery patterns that improve team productivity while preserving engineering quality, security, and human accountability.
• Help technical teams apply AI tools responsibly to compress solution design and delivery cycles.
• Build and mentor a strong community of Databricks architects, engineers, and AI practitioners.
• Define Databricks competencies, technical career expectations, learning paths, certification priorities, and mentoring practices.
• Coach through architecture reviews, paired problem solving, design critique, and hands-on technical leadership.
• Identify capability gaps and partner with practice leadership on hiring, staffing, succession, and development priorities.
• Foster a culture of collaboration, accountability, continuous learning, inclusive leadership, and engineering excellence.
• Serve as a primary technical counterpart to Databricks field solution architects, product teams, and partner engineering leaders.
• Provide partner-side product feedback and bring emerging platform knowledge back into the practice.
• Collaborate on joint solutions, client opportunities, technical enablement, and go-to-market priorities.
• Publish technical guidance, reference architectures, blogs, whitepapers, demos, and reusable solution content.
• Represent the practice at Databricks and industry events through presentations, panels, workshops, and community engagement.

Benefits

• Equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, amnesty, or status as a protected veteran in accordance with applicable federal, state and local laws.
• Barrier-free employment process with reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures.
• Salary range: $103,584 to $209,800 (base salary only, does not include benefits or any potential equity or variable bonus programs).

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed