GCP Spanner Data Engineer

Job Title: GCP Spanner Data Engineer
Locations: Dallas, TX / Irving, TX / Basking Ridge, NJ
Employment Type: Contract / C2C
Experience Required: 12+ Years
Project Duration: 12 months

Work Arrangement: Work from Client Office – 3 days a week

Interview: Three rounds of Video interview

Telecom domain experience is a plus.

Job Description:

Key Responsibilities:

• Design and manage the GraphQL schema
• Build highly optimized resolver functions that bridge the GraphQL schema directly to data warehouses
• Implement GraphQL Subscriptions to stream live data, event changes, or real-time metrics using message brokers like Apache Kafka
• Design and implement scalable data pipelines using GCP-native services (Dataflow, Dataproc, Pub/Sub, Cloud Composer/Airflow)
• Architect and optimize BigQuery datasets, tables, and queries for analytical workloads at scale
• Design and manage Cloud Spanner schemas for globally distributed, strongly consistent transactional data
• Build and maintain data models, transformations, and orchestration workflows using Cloud Workflows and related tools
• Develop backend data services and ETL/ELT scripts in Python
• Integrate and manage Firestore for real-time, document-oriented data use cases
• Implement data governance, lineage, and quality frameworks using tools like Dataplex or Data Catalog
• Collaborate on infrastructure-as-code using Terraform for GCP resource provisioning
• Monitor pipeline health, optimize costs, and troubleshoot production issues
• Redesign and optimize existing data pipelines and architectures as needed to ensure high performance and scalability.
• Oversee the  end-to-end data delivery process, from ingestion to transformation and reporting.
• Perform  code reviews, enforce best practices, and ensure the quality and consistency of the codebase.
• Manage workflows and scheduling with tools like Apache Airflow to ensure smooth execution of pipelines.
• Use  GCP technologies like Dataflow, Apache Beam, BigQuery, Dataproc, and other services for data transformation, storage, and analysis.
• Develop scalable solutions with  Apache Spark, Hadoop, and other distributed systems on GCP.
• Monitor and optimize the performance of data pipelines and processes.
• Collaborate with DevOps and Cloud teams for CI/CD integration and infrastructure optimization.
• Provide mentorship to junior engineers and  manage the team's performance effectively.

Required Skills and Experience:

• 12+  years of experience in data engineering with at least  5+ years on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
• Must have minimum 2 years of  GraphQL schema work exp.
• Must have minimum 2 years of  GCP Spanner, Python and BigQuery work exp.
• Solid understanding of  network/telecom domains, including relevant data types and use cases.
• Expertise in GCP tools, including:
  • BigQuery for schema design, partitioning, clustering, query optimization, cost governance, data warehousing and analytics
  • Dataproc for managing Apache Spark and Hadoop clusters
  • Airflow for orchestration of workflows and pipelines
  • Data streaming with  Python
• Strong experience in  Apache Spark and  Hadoop ecosystems.
• Production experience with  Cloud Spanner — schema design, interleaving, transaction patterns, and performance tuning
• Solid understanding of GCP data services: Dataflow, Pub/Sub, Cloud Storage, Dataproc, Cloud Composer
• Experience with Cloud Workflows for serverless orchestration
• Hands-on experience with  Firestore (Native mode preferred) for NoSQL/document storage patterns
• Strong SQL skills and understanding of data warehousing concepts
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines (Cloud Build, GitHub Actions) and version control (Git)
• Ability to design, develop, and optimize  ETL/ELT pipelines for large-scale data.
• Hands-on experience in  data modeling and  data architecture design.
• Strong problem-solving skills and  ability to redesign existing solutions if needed.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills to collaborate with both technical and business teams.
• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field; OR equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.

Preferred Skills:

• Familiarity with  real-time data streaming technologies.
• Experience with dbt for transformation layer on BigQuery
• Familiarity with streaming architectures (exactly once semantics, late data handling)
• Knowledge of data mesh or data Lakehouse patterns
• Exposure to Vertex AI or ML pipelines for MLOps workflows
• GCP Professional Data Engineer certification