Databricks Data Governance Engineer

Northrop Grumman develops advanced systems and technologies that support significant national and global missions. The Databricks Data Governance Engineer will lead the design, implementation, and governance of access controls across the Databricks Lakehouse environment, serving as the senior technical owner of the data access control model. The role combines security architecture, software engineering, compliance controls, identity governance, and hands-on implementation in collaboration with engineering and enterprise stakeholders.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the design and implementation of RBAC and ABAC within Databricks Unity Catalog, including data structure, access models, and tagging standards
• Define the security architecture for data access, including dynamic views, row-level security, and column masking
• Develop the identity governance approach for Databricks, including service principals, workload identities, and integration with enterprise identity providers
• Translate regulatory, contractual, and compliance requirements into practical technical controls within the platform
• Establish and maintain data classification standards and tagging structures that support scalable access control
• Implement grants, catalogs, tags, and access controls as code using Terraform and/or Databricks Asset Bundles to support version control and audit readiness
• Work closely with workspace administrators and platform engineers to align workspace, compute, secrets, and network controls with the broader data access strategy
• Create guardrails, templates, and streamlined workflows that allow data engineers to manage access appropriately while maintaining strong security controls

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in a relevant discipline and at least 8 years as a Software Engineer or Data Engineer with a heavy focus on data platform security and security automation; Master's degree and at least 6 years of relevant experience
• At least 2 years of hands on experience implementing Databricks Unity Catalog security features
• Demonstrated experience designing and implementing RBAC and ABAC models at scale, including hands on experience with Databricks Unity Catalog, grants, dynamic views, row and column level filtering and masking
• Fluency with identity and federation patterns including SCIM, service principals, and integration with enterprise identity providers such as Entra ID
• Experience applying infrastructure-as-code practices, preferably Terraform to access, tagging, and policy management in Databricks
• Proficiency in Python and SQL for automation, monitoring, and compliance
• The ability to obtain a government security clearance
• Working onsite full time in Falls Church, VA
• Master's degree