Java Spark Engineer

Job Title: Java Spark Engineer

Location: Berkeley Heights, NJ (5 days onsite — flexibility to support weekends)

Job Type: Contract

Experience: 7 years Java development; 5 years Apache Spark in production

Job Overview

Key Responsibilities

• Architect and build scalable, fault-tolerant data pipelines using Apache Spark (Java)
• Drive performance tuning: partitioning strategy, memory management, shuffle/skew optimization
• Mentor mid-level and junior engineers; act as technical escalation point
• Partner with product, analytics, and platform teams to translate requirements into scalable systems
• Own production reliability — incident response and root-cause analysis for pipeline failures
• Contribute to capacity planning and cost optimization for cluster infrastructure

Required Skills

• 7 years professional Java development experience
• 5 years hands-on Apache Spark in production environments
• Expert-level distributed systems knowledge: fault tolerance, data locality, shuffle mechanics, resource management
• Proven track record designing systems at terabyte scale
• Strong SQL and deep familiarity with columnar storage formats: Parquet, ORC, Avro, Delta Lake/Iceberg
• Experience with cluster managers: YARN, Kubernetes, cloud-managed Spark
• Proficiency with Apache Kafka
• Strong grasp of CI/CD, containerization, and infrastructure-as-code practices

Preferred Skills

• Experience with Apache Flink or other stream-processing frameworks
• Familiarity with data governance, lineage, and quality frameworks
• Experience with workflow orchestration at scale
• Background in system design for multi-tenant or multi-region data platforms

Location & Work Model

Berkeley Heights, NJ — fully onsite, 5 days per week. Candidates must be flexible to support weekend operations when needed.

Engagement Details

5 openings available. Contract engagement. Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field required.