Databricks Center of Excellence (CoE) Leader

Job Family: Data Engineering & Architecture Consulting Travel Required: Up to 25% Clearance Required: Ability to Obtain Public Trust What You Will Do: Guidehouse is seeking a strategic and technically strong Databricks Center of Excellence (CoE) Leader to accelerate and mature our Databricks capabilities across the firm and support critical client delivery needs. This leader will establish and scale an enterprise-grade CoE that advances our cloud data engineering, analytics, AI/ML, and Lakehouse delivery excellence on the Databricks platform. This role requires a blend of hands-on Databricks expertise, executive‑level communication, vendor relationship management, and proven experience standing up and running enterprise technology CoEs. CoE Leadership & Strategy Lead the Databricks CoE to enable excellence in platform standards, reusable assets, delivery patterns, and best practices. Develop and maintain the Databricks capability roadmap aligned to market demands of segments served by Guidehouse. Lead governance, intake, prioritization, and performance management of CoE initiatives and shared services. Drive adoption of consistent frameworks, architecture patterns, and accelerators across client engagements. Technical Excellence & Enablement Serve as the senior subject matter expert (SME) on Databricks Lakehouse, Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, MLflow, model governance, and data engineering pipelines. Oversee development of reusable code, templates, libraries, and reference architectures. Guide teams in solution design decisions for large-scale data modernization, AI/ML, and analytics workloads. Maintain expert-level understanding of Databricks platform updates, roadmap advancements, and industry best practices. Vendor & Partner Management Manage and strengthen the strategic partnership with Databricks, including co-selling, technical alignment, JDPs, and joint marketing opportunities. Coordinate with cloud partners (Azure, AWS, GCP) to align Databricks engagements within cloud ecosystem strategies. Act as the primary Guidehouse point-of-contact for Databricks partner leadership and technical organizations. Capability Development & Delivery Quality Build and scale a Databricks-skilled workforce through training, certification programs, technical communities, and knowledge-sharing. Provide oversight and quality assurance for major Databricks-enabled client engagements. Develop and enforce delivery standards, security and governance guidelines, and MLOps best practices. Business Growth & Thought Leadership Support business development by contributing to proposals, solutioning, client workshops, and platform demonstrations. Create thought leadership on Lakehouse architectures, generative AI on Databricks, and enterprise data innovation. Partner with leaders across sectors to shape differentiated offerings powered by Databricks. What You Will Need: US Citizenship is required Bachelor's degree is required Minimum TEN (10 years in data engineering, cloud data platforms, or enterprise analytics. Minimum FIVE (5) years leading large-scale cloud or data platform programs. Deep, hands-on understanding of the Databricks platform, including Delta Lake, Databricks SQL, Unity Catalog, MLflow, and Lakehouse Architecture. Experience establishing or running a technology Center of Excellence or platform engineering function. Demonstrated success managing enterprise vendor relationships—preferably with Databricks, Azure, AWS, or other strategic cloud/data partners. Strong communication skills, with the ability to influence senior executives and technical teams. Prior consulting or professional services experience delivering complex data and AI solutions. What Would Be Nice To Have: Databricks certifications (Data Engineer Professional, Machine Learning Professional, or Solutions Architect). Working knowledge of the Advana platform in the Department of War. Experience with Azure Databricks in secure government cloud environments (Azure Gov/GCC High or