Associate, Data Platform Engineering

About the role

Over the last 20 years, Ares' success has been driven by our people and our culture. Today, our team is guided by our core values - Collaborative, Responsible, Entrepreneurial, Self-Aware, Trustworthy - and our purpose to be a catalyst for shared prosperity and a better future. Through our recruitment, career development and employee-focused programming, we are committed to fostering a welcoming and inclusive work environment where high-performance talent of diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives can build careers within this exciting and growing industry.

About the role

Ares Management is a leading global alternative investment manager operating across Credit, Private Equity, Real Estate, Infrastructure, and Secondaries. The firm's technology organization is focused on building scalable, innovative, and data-driven capabilities that enable investment professionals and business partners to make informed decisions and drive operational excellence

We are seeking an Associate, Data Platform Engineering, a hands-on engineering role responsible for supporting and operating the enterprise Azure and Databricks data platform. This role works closely with Data Platform Engineering, Data Ingestion & Integration, Data Engineering & Data Products, and Data Distribution Services teams to ensure the platform remains secure, scalable, reliable, and optimized.

The ideal candidate possesses strong technical fundamentals in data engineering, enjoys solving complex data challenges, and is eager to work alongside engineers, data architects, and business stakeholders in a fast-paced environment.

• Reporting relationships
• Reports to: Principal, Head of Data Platforms
• Supervises: n/a

Primary functions & responsibilities

• Develop and maintain scalable data pipelines, ETL/ELT processes, and data integrations.
• Support ingestion of structured and unstructured data from internal and external sources.
• Assist with building and optimizing cloud-based data solutions and enterprise data platforms.
• Partner with business teams to understand reporting and analytics requirements.
• Monitor data quality, performance, and reliability across data environments.
• Contribute to data governance, lineage, and documentation initiatives.
• Participate in code reviews and engineering best practices.

Qualifications

Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field

Experience Required

• Hands-on experience designing, developing, deploying, and supporting enterprise-scale data pipelines using Azure Databricks, Apache Spark, Delta Lake, Python, SQL, and Azure Data Factory, including both batch and streaming workloads.
• Strong experience maintaining and enhancing existing data pipelines, including troubleshooting production issues, performance tuning, root-cause analysis, pipeline optimization, data recovery, reprocessing, and operational support activities.
• Experience implementing ETL/ELT processes, custom transformations, data enrichment, data validation, and data quality controls within Bronze, Silver, and Gold Medallion Architecture environments.
• Hands-on experience supporting Azure Databricks capabilities including Workspaces, Unity Catalog, Databricks Workflows, Delta Live Tables (DLT), SQL Warehouses, Cluster Policies, Lakehouse Monitoring, and System Tables.
• Strong understanding of CI/CD, Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform), GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, automated testing, release management, and environment promotion strategies supporting both platform and data engineering workloads.
• Experience implementing and supporting observability, telemetry, logging, alerting, and operational monitoring utilizing Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Application Insights, Azure Workbooks, Databricks Audit Logs, Databricks Lakehouse Monitoring, and Databricks Job Monitoring, ensuring proactive issue detection and rapid incident resolution.
• Experience supporting data governance and operational controls including Unity Catalog Lineage, data reconciliation, exception handling, audit trails, metadata management, data quality frameworks, and regulatory compliance requirements.
• Working knowledge of real-time and event-driven architectures leveraging Kafka, Azure Event Hubs, Azure Service Bus, CDC technologies, and Databricks Structured Streaming.
• Strong troubleshooting and engineering skills with the ability to independently diagnose and resolve issues across data pipelines, cloud infrastructure, platform services, security configurations, networking, and application integrations.

General Requirements

• 6+ years of experience in Data Platform Engineering, Cloud Engineering, Infrastructure Engineering, DevOps, or Data Operations.
• Experience supporting Azure cloud environments and Databricks platforms.
• Experience working in enterprise-scale cloud and data ecosystems.
• Familiarity with DevOps, automation, monitoring, and cloud operations.
• Financial Services, Asset Management, Banking, or other regulated industry experience preferred.

Reporting Relationships

Managing Director, Head of Data Engineering & AI Platforms

Compensation

The anticipated base salary range for this position is listed below. Total compensation may also include a discretionary performance-based bonus. Note, the range takes into account a broad spectrum of qualifications, including, but not limited to, years of relevant work experience, education, and other relevant qualifications specific to the role.

$85,000 - $100,000

The firm also offers robust Benefits offerings. Ares U.S. Core Benefits include Comprehensive Medical/Rx, Dental and Vision plans; 401(k) program with company match; Flexible Savings Accounts (FSA); Healthcare Savings Accounts (HSA) with company contribution; Basic and Voluntary Life Insurance; Long-Term Disability (LTD) and Short-Term Disability (STD) insurance; Employee Assistance Program (EAP), and Commuter Benefits plan for parking and transit.

Ares offers a number of additional benefits including access to a world-class medical advisory team, a mental health app that includes coaching, therapy and psychiatry, a mindfulness and wellbeing app, financial wellness benefit that includes access to a financial advisor, new parent leave, reproductive and adoption assistance, emergency backup care, matching gift program, education sponsorship program, and much more.

There is no set deadline to apply for this job opportunity. Applications will be accepted on an ongoing basis until the search is no longer active.