Principal Software Engineer, Tech Lead - Databricks Platform

About Cardlytics
Founded in 2008, Cardlytics (NASDAQ: CDLX) is the industry-leading purchase intelligence and incentives platform. We make commerce smarter and more rewarding for everyone by helping businesses attract, understand, and incentivize consumers through our partners' digital reward programs. Join us on our mission to make commerce smarter and more rewarding for everyone!

About the Team

At Data Infrastructure, our goal is to streamline Cardlytics data consumption across the entire organization. We understand that accessible, reliable data underpins informed decision-making and innovative problem-solving. By partnering closely with product and engineering teams, we tailor our solutions to fit their specific workflow needs and make strategic investments in our Data Infrastructure to ensure swift access to data. Our approach is designed to not only simplify the way teams interact with data but also to accelerate time-to-insight, enabling Cardlytics teams to harness the full potential of their data for impactful outcomes.

Cardlytics is seeking a Principal Software Engineer, Tech Lead - Databricks Platform to join the team, reporting to the Director Cloud & Data Infrastructure.

We are looking for an experienced technical leader to own and evolve our Databricks environment end-to-end on AWS. In this role, you will make administrative, design, and tactical decisions that shape how Analysts, ML Engineers, and Business stakeholders interact with data at Cardlytics. You will combine deep Databricks expertise with the ability to lead a small team, define platform standards, and act as the primary technical partner for diverse user groups across the organization.

• Platform Administration: Own day-to-day administration of the Databricks environment on AWS, including workspace configuration, cluster policies, user and group management, access controls, and cost governance.

• Architecture & Design: Design and evolve the Cardlytics Databricks architecture; establish reference architectures and standards for batch, streaming, and ML workloads.

• Governance & Security: Drive adoption of Unity Catalog for centralized RBAC, column-level security, data lineage, and metadata management; implement and maintain security best practices including encryption and audit logging.

• Performance & Reliability: Monitor platform health, define SLAs, and lead performance tuning for Spark jobs, Delta tables, and SQL warehouses; own incident response and root-cause analysis.

• User Enablement: Serve as the primary technical partner for Analysts, ML Engineers, and Business users; develop self-service guides, onboarding materials, and best-practice documentation to reduce friction across all user groups.

• Infrastructure as Code: Own the CI/CD strategy for Databricks deployments using Terraform, GitHub Actions, and Databricks Asset Bundles; enforce DevOps practices across the team.

• Leadership: Lead and mentor a small team of data/platform engineers; provide technical direction, drive engineering excellence, and manage the Databricks vendor relationship.

• 7+ years of experience in data engineering or data platform roles, with at least 2 years in a technical lead or architecture capacity.

• Deep, hands-on expertise with the Databricks platform: Delta Lake, Spark (PySpark), Databricks SQL, Unity Catalog, Workflows, and cluster management on AWS.

• Proven experience designing and delivering Lakehouse architectures and large-scale ELT/ETL pipelines in production environments.

• Proficiency in Infrastructure as Code tools, preferably Terraform.

• Demonstrated experience supporting diverse stakeholder groups including Analysts, ML Engineers, and non-technical Business users.

• Strong understanding of data governance, data modeling, and cloud security best practices.

• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to translate technical concepts for non-technical audiences.

Technical Environment

We primarily use macOS and Google Workspace (Docs, Sheets, Slides). While our preferred platform is macOS, we support both macOS and Windows. Familiarity with or willingness to work within this environment is required.

Core Values

Our shared values are the driving force behind everything we do. Across all roles, we are looking for teammates who embody these values:

• Customer and partner first

• Act with urgency and focus

• Integrity with our partners and data

• Accountability even when challenged

• Empowerment over hierarchy

• Growth over comfort

Benefits and Perks

• Flexible paid time off plus company holidays

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance begins on your first day

• 401(k) retirement plan with company match, plan also includes a student loan debt repayment option

• Employee Stock Purchase Plan

• Educational assistance for continuing education

• Lifestyle Spending Account for physical, emotional, and financial wellness (like gym memberships, home down payments, art classes, park passes, and more!)

• Complimentary Calm app subscriptions to support employee mental health and wellbeing

As an equal opportunity employer, Cardlytics is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Our people bring our products and organization to life, and every unique perspective makes us better. If you can do the job and you’re excited about growing with us as we scale our best-in-class advertising platform, we’d love to hear from you. If you need accommodation in the recruiting process due to a disability, please email [email protected] or inform your recruiter.