Databricks Solution Architect (f/m/d)

Location: Baden, Madrid, London | Workload: 80–100%

Who We Are
Axpo is driven by a single purpose to enable a sustainable future through innovative energy solutions. As Switzerland's largest producer of renewable energy and a leading international energy trader, we leverage cutting-edge technologies to serve customers in over 30 countries. We thrive on collaboration, innovation, and a passion for driving impactful change.

About the Team
You’ll report directly to the Head of Development and be part of our highly skilled data platform engineering team. Together, we are building a secure, scalable, and efficient data platform to empower Axpo’s decentralized business hubs with self-service analytics and AI capabilities. We work in close collaboration with stakeholders across Europe, bringing together global innovation and local context.

What You Will Do
As a Databricks Solution Architect, you will play a pivotal role in Axpo’s enterprise data transformation by designing and governing scalable and secure solutions on the Databricks Lakehouse platform.

You will:

• Define architecture standards and patterns for Databricks-based solutions across ingestion, processing, and analytics.
• Lead the design of performant, secure, and cost-effective Lakehouse architectures aligned with enterprise needs.
• Collaborate with business stakeholders, engineers, and data scientists to design end-to-end solutions that enable innovation and data-driven decision making.
• Guide engineering teams on implementing best practices around data modeling, orchestration, CI/CD, and infrastructure-as-code.
• Promote and govern usage of Unity Catalog for access control, lineage, and metadata management.
• Champion platform observability, data quality, and operational monitoring across analytics pipelines.
• Evaluate new Databricks features (e.g., Delta Sharing, governance enhancements) and lead their integration into platform capabilities.
• Establish solution review processes and mentor engineers and analysts on architectural thinking and Databricks capabilities.
• Support security, compliance, and cost-optimization efforts in close collaboration with platform and cloud teams.

What You Bring & Who You Are

You are a strategic thinker with hands-on technical expertise and a strong focus on business value. You bring:

• A degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Information Systems, or related field.
• 5+ years in data engineering and 3+ years in architecture roles, with deep experience designing solutions on Databricks and Apache Spark.
• Strong grasp of Delta Lake, Lakehouse architecture, and Unity Catalog governance.
• Expertise in Python, SQL, and optionally Scala; strong familiarity with dbt and modern ELT practices.
• Proven experience integrating Databricks with Azure services (e.g., Data Lake, Synapse, Event Hubs).
• Hands-on knowledge of CI/CD, GitOps, Terraform, and orchestration tools (e.g., Dragster, Airflow).
• Sound understanding of enterprise data architecture, data governance, and security principles (e.g., GDPR).
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills, able to bridge technical and business domains.
• Fluency in English; other European languages a plus.

Technologies You’ll Work With

• Core: Databricks, Spark, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, dbt, SQL, Python
• Cloud: Microsoft Azure (Data Lake, Synapse, Storage, Event Hubs)
• DevOps: Bitbucket/GitHub, Azure DevOps, Terraform
• Orchestration & Monitoring: Dragster, Airflow, Datadog, Grafana
• Visualization: Power BI
• Other: Confluence, Docker, Linux

Nice to Have

• Knowledge of Microsoft Fabric or Snowflake
• Familiarity with Dataiku or similar low-code analytics platforms
• Experience with enterprise metadata and lineage solutions
• Background in energy trading or related industries