Senior Data Platform Engineer at Sun International

Job Description

• The Senior Data Platform Engineer will operate, maintain and evolve Sun International’s Databricks-based data platform as the senior hands-on engineer bridging architecture and daily execution.
• The role will own production pipelines, mentor and unblock team members, enforce platform standards and ensure operational excellence in a regulated, multi-jurisdictional environment.

Core behavioural and Technical / proficiency competencies:

• Data platform engineering, integration, streaming (Kafka)
• Cloud infrastructure & IaC (Azure, Bicep)
• Databricks, Python, SQL pipelines
• AI-augmented engineering
• Production operations, reliability, and incident management
• Security, governance, and compliance enforcement
• Architecture standards and technical translation
• Analytical thinking and problem-solving
• Technical mentorship and knowledge sharing
• Collaboration, teamwork, and communication clarity
• Resilience, stress management, and change leadership
• Pragmatism, commercial judgment, integrity, and risk awareness

Job Requirements

• B degree in CS, Software Engineering, Information Systems, Data Engineering, or related field
• 8–10 years in data engineering/platform roles; 3+ years managing production pipelines
• Hands-on Databricks: Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Lakeflow/Delta Live Tables, SQL & Python notebooks, Workflows
• Strong Python skills; production-quality code
• Knowledge of streaming/Kafka: topics, partitions, consumer groups, schema evolution
• Azure fundamentals: resource groups, VNets, private endpoints, Key Vault, Entra ID, DevOps pipelines
• Production operations: diagnosing, resolving, preventing issues
• Security-first mindset

Preferred/Advantageous:

• Experience in SA gaming/financial regulations (POPIA, PCI-DSS, FICA, National Gambling Act)
• Bicep/Terraform IaC
• Neo4j/graph databases
• AI/ML serving, agent orchestration, model endpoints, AI Gateway
• Enterprise experience with LLM APIs