Senior Data/ML Engineer — Databricks Forecasting Platform | Remote

Headquarters: Remote

URL: https://www.toptal.com/

About the Role

We're looking for a Senior Data/ML Engineer to refactor, operationalize, and improve an existing time series forecasting platform that's already live and driving real business value. This is not a greenfield build — the focus is modernizing a Databricks-based forecasting system that's been maintained primarily by a single developer for years. You'll reduce technical debt, strengthen testing and observability, and raise the engineering bar on a system the business already depends on.

If you'd rather bring discipline and maturity to an existing production system than start from a blank slate, this is built for that.

What You'll Do

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• Review the current forecasting platform architecture and identify areas for improvement

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• Refactor existing Databricks, Python, and PySpark implementations

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• Move business logic out of Databricks notebooks and into reusable Python modules or packages

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• Improve separation of concerns between orchestration and core business logic

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• Establish stronger engineering standards and help define what "good" looks like for the platform

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• Implement or improve automated testing practices and validation mechanisms for forecasting workflows

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• Build or improve monitoring and observability, increasing visibility into how predictions are generated

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• Help monitor model behavior and operational health over time

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• Improve reliability of scheduled training workflows, reducing manual intervention on failure

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• Improve failure handling, retries, and overall workflow resilience

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• Maintain and extend existing forecasting capabilities as needed

What You Bring

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• Strong professional experience with Databricks, including workspaces, notebooks, scheduled workflows, and CI/CD processes

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• Strong Python engineering experience, including designing reusable modules or packages

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• Strong PySpark experience with production data pipelines or distributed data processing

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• Experience refactoring production code and improving maintainability

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• Familiarity with time series forecasting concepts and workflows

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• Ability to understand and work effectively within an existing, unfamiliar codebase

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• Experience improving software quality, testing strategy, and engineering standards

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• Experience implementing automated testing practices

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• Experience improving monitoring, observability, or operational visibility for production systems

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• Strong judgment around technical debt, refactoring priorities, and maintainable architecture

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• Ability to work with existing systems rather than only building from scratch

Why This Role

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• Real production impact: Improve a system the business already relies on, not a proof-of-concept

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• Engineering maturity focus: Bring testing, observability, and maintainability to a platform that's outgrown its current state

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• Meaningful ownership: Help define engineering standards for the forecasting platform going forward

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• Flexible location: Preference for Toronto or St. Louis, but open to remote consultants globally with North American working-hours overlap

How to Apply

Ready to bring engineering rigor to a production forecasting platform? Apply through Toptal here: https://www.toptal.com/talent/apply

To apply: https://weworkremotely.com/remote-jobs/toptal-senior-data-ml-engineer-databricks-forecasting-platform-remote