Contract Length: Initial 6 months (extension likely) Day Rate: £500 per day (Outside IR35) Location: Hybrid in South Wales Role Overview We are seeking an experienced Senior Data Engineer contractor to support and extend the Azure Databricks Lakehouse platform, ensuring the reliable delivery of new data pipelines alongside ongoing operational stability.This is a hands-on engineering role focused on implementation, optimisation and support of Delta Lake pipelines across Bronze, Silver, Staging and Gold layers, operating within an established architectural framework. Key Responsibilities Develop and maintain data pipelines in Azure Databricks using PySpark and SQL Build incremental processing using Delta Lake and Change Data Feed Extend and maintain watermark-driven CDC frameworks Implement and maintain Slowly Changing Dimension (SCD Type 2) logic Engineer time-aware joins and dimensional transformations Support optimisation of Spark workloads and Delta tables Solid understanding of dimensional modelling and star schema Medallion Architecture Delivery Implement ingestion patterns into Bronze Build Silver state, CDC and SCD2 tables Develop Gold dimensional models aligned to Kimball principles. Maintain clean separation of Bronze, Silver and Gold usage and responsibilities Delta Lake & Performance Optimisation Work extensively with Delta Lake features including: ACID transactions Merge-based upserts Partitioning and data layout strategies Tune Spark jobs and clusters to improve performance and cost efficiency What you need to do now If you're interested in this role, click 'apply now' to forward an up-to-date copy of your CV, or call us now. If this job isn't quite right for you, but you are looking for a new position, please contact us for a confidential discussion about your career. Hays Specialist Recruitment Limited acts as an employment agency for permanent recruitment and employment business for the supply of temporary workers. By applying for this job you accept the T&C's, Privacy Policy and Disclaimers which can be found at hays.co.uk