**Introduction** At IBM Global Sales, we bring together innovation, collaboration, and expertise to help clients solve their most complex business challenges. Working across industries and geographies, you’ll partner with colleagues, clients, and partners to co-create solutions that drive digital transformation and lasting impact.Success in Global Sales is built on curiosity, empathy, and collaboration. You’ll connect technical understanding with strong people skills, building trusted relationships and shaping solutions that improve business and society. With world-class onboarding, continuous learning, and a supportive culture, IBM offers the tools and opportunities to grow your career. Join us and be part of a global team that’s passionate about driving innovation and making a difference. **Your role and responsibilities** We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Spark Cluster Admin to join our dynamic team. This role is critical for building, optimizing, and supporting our cutting-edge data platform, leveraging Apache Spark, Apache Iceberg, and a robust DevOps approach within an OpenShift environment. The ideal candidate will be adept at both developing high-performance data solutions and ensuring their stability and reliability in a production setting. Key Responsibilities * Design, develop, and optimize scalable and resilient data processing applications using Apache Spark (batch, streaming, and real-time). * Implement and manage data pipelines, ensuring data quality, consistency, and performance. * Perform Spark job performance tuning and optimization to handle large-scale datasets efficiently. * Manage and automate the deployment of Spark applications within OpenShift clusters, utilizing Docker and Kubernetes. * Establish and maintain CI/CD pipelines for automated testing, deployment, and release management of Spark workloads. * Provide comprehensive production support for critical Spark jobs, including proactive monitoring, troubleshooting, debugging, and participation in on-call rotations. * Work extensively with Apache Iceberg table format, leveraging its capabilities for schema evolution, time travel, hidden partitioning, and ACID transactions. * Collaborate closely with data scientists, other data engineers, and operations teams to deliver robust and integrated solutions. * Develop and maintain documentation for data pipelines, job configurations, and operational procedures. **Required technical and professional expertise** * 9+ years of hands-on experience in Spark cluster administration roles. * Expert-level proficiency in Apache Spark (Spark Core, Spark SQL, Spark Streaming). * Strong programming skills in Scala, Python (PySpark), or Java. * Significant experience with OpenShift, including deploying, managing, and automating containerized applications within the platform. * Solid understanding of Docker and Kubernetes for containerization and orchestration. * Proven experience implementing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines using tools like Jenkins, GitLab CI, or similar. * Demonstrable experience with Apache Iceberg, including practical application of its features like schema evolution, time travel queries, and ACID compliance. * Strong background in production support for data applications, including monitoring, troubleshooting, and incident resolution. * Understanding and practical application of DevOps principles (Infrastructure as Code, automation, continuous monitoring). * Strong SQL skills and experience working with various data sources. * Excellent analytical and problem-solving abilities for diagnosing and resolving complex issues in distributed environments. * Familiarity with distributed systems concepts and architectures. **Preferred technical and professional experience** * Experience with other data lake table formats (e.g., Delta Lake, Apache Hudi). * Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) beyond OpenShift. * Experience with messaging queues or streaming platforms like Apache Kafka. * Contributions to open-source data projects. IBM is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, caste, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, veteran status, or other characteristics. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.