Data Platform Administrator

The Data Platform Administrator plays a critical role in managing, optimizing, and governing the core data platforms that power the CMS FPS program's cloud-based, high-performance analytics environment.

The Data Platform Administrator will:

• Primary technical owner of the end users' access and permissions to Snowflake and/or Databricks platforms.
• Responsible for ensuring these systems are performant, secure, well-governed, and accessible to data scientists, analysts, and engineers across the program.
• Oversee platform configuration, user and access management, cost optimization, and integration with upstream and downstream data systems.
• Requires close collaboration with data scientists, ML engineers, platform infrastructure teams, and program stakeholders to ensure the analytics environment remains stable, compliant, and aligned with evolving program needs.

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree with 9+ years of experience in data platform administration or a related technical field.
• Hands-on experience administering Snowflake environments, including virtual warehouse management, user/role-based access control, database/schema design, query optimization, and data sharing configurations.
• Demonstrated ability to configure and manage Databricks workspaces, clusters, job pipelines, and access policies, including experience with cluster sizing, autoscaling, and cost management.
• Strong proficiency in SQL for data querying, platform administration tasks, and performance tuning
• Experience enforcing data governance frameworks, role-based access control, and data security policies.
• Familiarity with PII/PHI handling requirements and encrypted data storage standards.
• Working knowledge of AWS services (S3, IAM, Lambda) and their integration with Snowflake and Databricks for data ingestion, storage, and pipeline orchestration.
• Ability to monitor platform health, analyze query performance, identify bottlenecks, and implement optimizations to improve reliability and reduce cost.
• Familiarity with SDLC fundamentals and experience using GitHub for version control and collaborative configuration management.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to support data scientists, engineers, and program stakeholders and clearly communicate platform changes and issues.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust clearance.
• US Citizenship or Green Card holder and must have been in the US at least 3 of the last 5 years.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with Databricks Unity Catalog for unified data governance, lineage tracking, and fine-grained access control across workspaces.
• Familiarity with Databricks Feature Store for managing and sharing ML features across model development workflows.
• Experience with Databricks REST APIs for programmatic workspace management, job orchestration, and platform automation.
• Advanced Apache Spark architecture knowledge and experience tuning distributed data processing workloads for performance and cost efficiency.
• Experience with Snowflake Data Sharing, external stages, and Snowpipe for automated, continuous data ingestion.
• Familiarity with MLflow and how model governance workflows interact with the Databricks and Snowflake platform layers.
• Prior experience working within CMS, including familiarity with CMS data systems, workflows, and governance structures.
• Knowledge of healthcare claims data, Medicare/Medicaid program data, or federal health analytics use cases.
• Experience with Confluence/JIRA for SAFe Agile project tracking and cross-functional documentation.