Principal Azure Data Platform Architect / Databricks & MLOps Lead

Remote
Contracted
Experienced

We are a growing information technology company that offers its employees a culture of success, the chance to work on revolutionary federal IT infrastructure, and the opportunity to grow alongside cutting-edge technology that is reshaping the industry. We are seeking forward thinking candidates that have strong experience in operational support and can help take to the next level in a pro-active stance.
 
Chameleon Integrated Services has expertise in operations management, quality systems, data operations and cybersecurity.  We secure some of the most sensitive data for the Department of Defense and for other U. S. federal government agencies.  We are known for the great care we take with clients and employees, and we believe in promoting from within.

Principal Azure Data Platform Architect / Databricks & MLOps Lead
Position Overview
  • Position Type: Part-Time Consultant / Technical Architecture Lead
  • Target Allocation: 22–26 hours/week average (Note: Workload is highest during the initial architecture build-out, legacy environment integration, automated pipeline deployment, multi-agency onboarding phases, and operational readiness reviews).
  • Location: Remote (U.S. Based) with periodic travel to Tallahassee, FL as required.
  • Cold-Start Baseline: The RFQ strictly mandates that all engineering, configuration, and testing occur entirely within State-provided environments. No vendor-hosted development or proprietary runtimes are permitted.
Chameleon is seeking a Principal Azure Data Platform Architect / Databricks & MLOps Lead to engineer the foundational infrastructure for a high-visibility contract with the Florida Office of the Chief Inspector General (OCIG). In this role, you will design, deploy, and automate the secure, multi-agency cloud data platform transforming a data analytics Proof of Concept (POC) into an enterprise-ready Decision Intelligence Platform.
This platform will unify statewide oversight, tracking abnormal spending patterns, contract vulnerabilities, and fraud/waste/abuse risks across up to 35 state agencies. Because this is a high-visibility, firm-fixed-price (FFP) state government contract, you will maintain absolute technical accountability for establishing an infrastructure that guarantees a 99% or greater pipeline run success rate and a 99.5% or greater overall system availability rating.

Principal Responsibilities
  • Multi-Environment Architecture Ownership: Take complete engineering ownership of the core system architecture across four distinct, logically isolated State environments: Development (DEV), Test/QA (TEST), User Acceptance Testing (UAT), and Production (PROD).
  • Cloud Data Foundation Build-Out: Deploy, configure, and manage the State-owned infrastructure utilizing Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 (ADLS Gen2) and integrated Databricks workspaces.
  • Analytical Pipeline Orchestration: Establish robust, reproducible patterns for automated data ingestion, incremental/historical loading, canonical schema processing, business rule execution, and machine learning scoring engines.
  • Automated Reliability Controls: Build and implement data pipeline monitoring to continuously demonstrate a 99% or greater successful run rate, factoring in real-time alerting for data anomalies, pipeline failures, or performance degradations.
  • Promotion & Release Management: Engineer automated version control, code rollback, environment promotion paths, and disaster recovery mechanics that align strictly with specified Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) targets.
  • Forensic Audit Traceability: Implement exhaustive logging, error handling, retry logic, and metadata management to preserve comprehensive source-to-target data lineage, providing the clear operational evidence required for independent OCIG verification testing.
  • Technical Agency Onboarding: Coordinate and execute the technical onboarding pipelines for an initial wave of 8–10 state agencies, establishing secure file transfer protocols and resolving cross-system schema differences.
  • State Ownership Handover: Package and document all system components, mapping templates, code notebooks, and configuration files into a fully editable, non-proprietary State Ownership and Transition Package.

Required Qualifications
  • Experience Baseline: 10+ years of comprehensive enterprise software or big data engineering experience.
  • Cloud Depth: 5+ years of dedicated, hands-on Azure cloud architecture and data platform deployment work.
  • Platform Toolkit: Extensive production-level experience configuring Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 (ADLS Gen2), Azure Databricks, and Azure Data Factory (or equivalent enterprise orchestration tools).
  • Languages: Advanced engineering proficiency in Python/PySpark and SQL for streaming and batch processing.
  • Pipeline Frameworks: Expert knowledge designing Raw, Silver, and Gold data layer architectures, managing schema evolution, data quality validation, and ledger reconciliation scripts.
  • Ingestion Vectors: Proven success establishing API, database, and flat file-based ingestion pathways across highly disparate legacy architectures.
  • Cloud Security & Identity: Advanced hands-on mastery of Azure security controls, including Entra ID, role-based access control (RBAC) alignment to least-privilege principles, managed identities, and Key Vault configuration.
  • DevOps & Monitoring: Strong background building CI/CD deployment pipelines, version-controlled repositories, and production monitoring dashboards.
  • MLOps Integration: Documented experience supporting machine learning scoring workflows, model deployment automation, or data pipeline drift detection systems.
  • Government Context: Proven history delivering technology, cloud architecture, or data infrastructure projects for local, state, military, or federal government entities.
  • Vetting & Location: Must be a U.S.-based citizen or resident. Must be able to successfully clear an FDLE Level II background screening (including fingerprinting) within 5 business days of contract award.

Strong Preferences
  • Direct experience deploying and managing architectures within secure Azure Government cloud environments.
  • Hands-on configuration experience utilizing MLflow, Delta Lake, or automated data lineage/metadata cataloging repositories.
  • Background managing technical integrations with Microsoft Power BI workspaces and handling specialized .pbix configuration templates.
  • Deep technical familiarity with NIST standards (SP 800-53/171), FedRAMP High control baselines, CJIS, or HIPAA data protection guidelines.
  • Prior experience establishing standardized multi-agency or cross-department state/federal data exchange models.

MANDATORY RESUME FORMATTING INSTRUCTIONS
The State of Florida strictly evaluates and verifies all named staff experience for this contract. Generic resumes that only list generalized technical summaries or generic cloud keyword lists will be automatically rejected.
To be considered for this role, your resume must explicitly detail the following metadata for your past contract positions:
  1. The Government Customer: Explicitly name the agency and the cloud infrastructure context (e.g., State Department, Military, Federal Agency).
  2. Architecture Scale & Complexity: Specify the exact dataset volumes processed, the number of distinct environments managed, and the precise project duration.
  3. Personal Engineering Contribution: Detail exactly what you personally built, scripted, or configured (e.g., "Coded PySpark reconciliation scripts," "Configured Azure RBAC least-privilege policies").
  4. System Deployment Status: Explicitly prove that your architectures reached true production, steady-state, or operational status rather than just theoretical design.
  5. Quantifiable Performance Metrics: Provide the precise metrics achieved under your management, such as percentage of pipeline run success rates, system availability uptime, data completeness markers, or page load response times.

“We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status”

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