Lead Data / Platform Engineer

Lead Data Platform Engineer Team: Ascend Cloud Foundation Platform Location: Hyderabad, India Experience: 8+ Years (with leadership experience) Employment Type: Full-Time Work Model: Hybrid Onsite (as applicable) Job Summary We are looking for an experienced Lead Data Platform Engineer to join our Ascend Cloud Foundation Platform team in Hyderabad. This role is critical in building scalable, secure, and high-performing data platforms that enable organizations to unlock the full value of their data. Reporting to the Engineering Director, you will lead an agile technical team, own core data platforms and applications, and drive engineering excellence. You will work in a collaborative environment that values innovation, learning, and delivery of high-impact outcomes while ensuring compliance with data security and regulatory standards. Key Responsibilities Lead and mentor a high-performing Agile engineering team, fostering innovation, collaboration, and technical excellence Design, build, and maintain data pipelines, data lakes, and cloud-native data platforms Ensure delivery of high-quality, scalable, and reliable software solutions Own the codebase and technical architecture, ensuring adherence to best practices and standards Drive technical and application ownership across platform components Collaborate with risk, security, and compliance teams to ensure adherence to GDPR, PCI DSS, and data privacy standards Identify overlapping technical requirements across teams and contribute to technology roadmaps Support and champion Agile methodologies to deliver high-value business outcomes Implement and govern DevOps, CI CD, and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) best practices Participate in architectural discussions, design reviews, and technical decision-making Required Qualifications & Experience Technical Skills Strong experience with DevOps & IaC tools: Terraform, CI CD pipelines, Git, Jenkins Extensive hands-on experience with Apache Spark Hadoop Strong experience with AWS cloud services, including: S3, Athena, Glue, Step Functions, Lambda, EventBridge, SQS, Lake Formation Proven experience building data pipelines and data lake architectures Strong programming skills in Python or Scala (PySpark preferred) Experience with Apache Airflow for workflow orchestration Experience with Bitbucket and Jira for application lifecycle management Strong understanding of configuration-as-code, APIs, and distributed systems Experience with automated testing methodologies Engineering & Design Capabilities Write clean, scalable, reusable code following SOLID principles and design patterns Strong ability to analyze, investigate, and work with large-scale datasets Experience with event-driven and cloud-native architectures Soft Skills Ability to communicate technical solutions clearly to technical and non-technical audiences Strong leadership, mentoring, and stakeholder collaboration skills Why Join Us Lead a core data platform with enterprise-scale impact High ownership role influencing architecture and roadmap Agile, innovation-driven engineering culture Strong growth and learning opportunities