Big Data Engineer (Hadoop & Cloud Specialist)
Praesignis (Pty) Ltd
Johannesburg, Gauteng
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Posted 19 August 2025

Job Details

Job Description


We are looking for a Big Data Engineer (Hadoop & Cloud Specialist) to join our growing team. The ideal candidate will have deep expertise in the Hadoop ecosystem, Spark/PySpark, Python, and Cloud platforms (AWS, Cloudera, etc.). This role will focus on developing and deploying big data applications, providing advanced user support and troubleshooting, and driving platform optimization both on-premise and in the cloud. Beyond migration, the position will play a key role in onboarding, training, and long-term platform success, making it a vital contributor to our data strategy and business growth.


Key Responsibilities

  • Provide advanced support and troubleshooting for users working on Hadoop, Spark, and PySpark environments.

  • Develop, deploy, and maintain applications and processes on Hadoop clusters.

  • Review, optimise, and enhance code and processes to improve performance, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness (especially in cloud environments).

  • Support both on-premise and cloud-based big data environments, ensuring stability, scalability, and security.

  • Contribute to the migration of big data workloads to the cloud, working closely with the ingestion team.

  • Drive post-migration activities including onboarding of new teams, user training, and ongoing platform optimisation.

  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams to identify gaps, provide technical guidance, and ensure best practices in big data development and operations.


Required Skills & Experience

  • Strong knowledge of the Hadoop ecosystem (HDFS, YARN, Hive, HBase, etc.).

  • Proven experience with Apache Spark and PySpark for data processing.

  • Proficiency in Python for data engineering and application development.

  • Hands-on experience with Cloud platforms (AWS, Cloudera, or equivalent), including:

    • Cloud Networking

    • Cloud Security

    • Cloud resource optimization for cost management

  • Experience reviewing and optimizing big data code and processes.

  • Ability to design, build, and support scalable big data solutions in both on-prem and cloud environments.

  • Strong troubleshooting and problem-solving skills.


Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience with data migration projects, particularly moving workloads from on-prem to cloud.

  • Exposure to platform onboarding, user enablement, and training.

  • Familiarity with performance tuning and cost optimization strategies in big data/cloud ecosystems.

  • Developer-oriented background with the ability to contribute to long-term platform success and innovation.