Senior Data Architect

Designation: Sr. Manager/ Engagement Manager

Job Location: Bengaluru/ Delhi NCR

Shift Timing: 1:00PM IST – 10:00 PM IST

Experience: 8+ years

EXL is a leading operations management and analytics company that helps businesses enhance growth and profitability in the face of relentless competition and continuous disruption. Using our proprietary, award-winning Business EXLerator Framework™, which integrates analytics, automation, benchmarking, BPO, consulting, industry best practices and technology platforms, we look deeper to help companies improve global operations, enhance data-driven insights, increase customer satisfaction, and manage risk and compliance. EXL serves the insurance, healthcare, banking and financial services, utilities, travel, transportation and logistics industries. Headquartered in New York, New York, EXL has more than 24,000 professionals in locations throughout the United States, Europe, Asia (primarily India and Philippines), Latin America, Australia and South Africa.

EXL Analytics provides data-driven, action-oriented solutions to business problems through statistical data mining, cutting edge analytics techniques and a consultative approach. Leveraging proprietary methodology and best-of-breed technology, EXL Analytics takes an industry-specific approach to transform our clients decision making and embed analytics more deeply into their business processes. Our global footprint of nearly 2,000 data scientists and analysts assist client organizations with complex risk minimization methods, advanced marketing, pricing and CRM strategies, internal cost analysis, and cost and resource optimization within the organization.EXL Analytics serves the insurance, healthcare, banking, capital markets, utilities, retail and e-commerce, travel, transportation and logistics industries.

Please visit www.exlservice.com for more information about EXL Analytics.

Job Responsibilities:

• Own and define end-to-end Databricks Lakehouse architecture for large-scale analytics platforms
• Design secure, scalable, and cost-optimized solutions using Delta Lake, Databricks SQL, and Apache Spark
• Translate business and analytical requirements into robust data models and layered architectures (Bronze/Silver/Gold)
• Establish architectural standards and best practices for data ingestion, transformation, storage, and consumption
• Define and enforce data governance, security, access controls, and data quality across the platform
• Review and optimize data pipelines, storage patterns, and query performance for scale and cost efficiency
• Act as a hands-on architect with active involvement in development, code reviews, and performance optimization
• Collaborate with Data Engineers, Data Scientists, and business stakeholders to align architecture with business goals
• Mentor and guide junior data engineers, and drive adoption of best practices in data engineering and architecture

Skills:

Must have:

• Hands-on expertise with Databricks, Delta Lake, and Lakehouse (Bronze/Silver/Gold / Medallion) architecture, with ownership of enterprise-scale analytical platforms
• Advanced proficiency in Databricks SQL, Spark SQL, and PySpark, including end-to-end performance optimization (partitioning strategies, caching, query tuning, shuffle optimization, cluster sizing)
• Strong experience in logical, physical, and dimensional data modeling (3NF, Star/Snowflake schemas) for analytics and reporting workloads
• Strong understanding of Apache Spark and distributed data processing concepts, applied at production scale
• Hands-on experience designing, deploying, and governing Databricks on at least one major cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP), including environment strategy (dev/test/prod)
• Expertise in data governance, security, and access controls, including Unity Catalog, RBAC, data masking, and secure data sharing
• Strong understanding of data quality, lineage, metadata, and observability frameworks, and ability to bake these into platform and pipeline design
• Hands-on experience with pipeline orchestration and scheduling, such as Databricks Workflows, Apache Airflow, or equivalent tools, with production ownership
• Proven experience with multi-workspace architecture and cross-workspace governance, including domain isolation, shared data access, and centralized control via Unity Catalog
• Demonstrated ownership of cost optimization for Databricks workloads, including cluster policies, workload isolation, Photon usage, job vs. interactive compute, and SQL/query cost management
• Strong stakeholder communication, business acumen, and architectural documentation skills, with ability to lead design reviews and influence data strategy

Good to Have:

• Experience designing real-time or near real-time architectures using Structured Streaming, CDC, and event-driven patterns
• Exposure to CI/CD and DevOps practices for Databricks, including Git integration, automated testing, and environment promotion
• Experience integrating Databricks with BI platforms such as Power BI, Tableau, or Looker, including semantic layer considerations
• Familiarity with advanced platform optimization patterns, such as workload isolation by persona, concurrency management, and SLA-driven architecture

Eligibility:

• Master's or Bachelor's degree in Math, Statistics, Economics, Computer Science or related analytics field from top-tier universities with strong record of achievement
• 8+ Years of experience (The candidate should have minimum 6+ years of experience in Databricks Unified Data Analytics Platform)