Migration Lead - SAS to Databricks

Job Title: Migration Lead - SAS to Databricks

Experience: 10-15+ Years

Rate: $55-$60/hour

Job Summary

• We are seeking an experienced Migration Lead - SAS to Databricks to lead an end-to-end modernization initiative, migrating legacy SAS workloads to the Databricks platform.
• The ideal candidate will have strong hands-on experience with SAS programming, data engineering, and cloud-based analytics, along with proven leadership experience in planning and executing large-scale data migration projects.
• The role involves leading SAS estate discovery, defining migration strategies, overseeing code conversion to PySpark/Spark SQL, ensuring functional equivalence, and driving performance Eligible to workimization and production readiness.
• The candidate will collaborate closely with business stakeholders, SAS subject matter experts, data engineering teams, and cloud platform teams to deliver a scalable, governed, and cost-effective modern data platform.

Key Responsibilities

• Migration Leadership & Governance
• Lead end-to-end SAS-to-Databricks migration programs across discovery, proof of concept (PoC), pilot, and production rollout phases.
• Own migration strategy, execution planning, governance, and delivery milestones.
• Define migration waves, dependency mapping, rollout plans, and risk mitigation strategies.
• Coordinate across business, data engineering, platform, and architecture teams.
• Track migration progress, resolve technical challenges, and communicate status to leadership.

SAS Estate Discovery & Assessment

• Conduct detailed assessments of existing SAS environments, including:
• Base SAS programs, SAS Macros, and PROC SQL.
• Statistical models, actuarial models, and analytical workloads.
• SAS datasets, external data sources, and batch processing jobs.
• Job schedules, dependencies, and downstream reporting systems.
• Identify business-critical logic, regulatory reporting requirements, SLA-driven workloads, and complex transformation rules.
• Classify workloads based on complexity, business criticality, migration effort, and risk.
• Migration Strategy & Technical Execution
• Define the target-state architecture on Azure Databricks or AWS Databricks.
• Lead the conversion of SAS programs and business logic into PySpark and Spark SQL.
• Address SAS-specific behaviors, including data types, null handling, numeric precision, sorting, aggregations, and edge cases.
• Establish reusable migration patterns, coding standards, and automation opportunities.
• Oversee development, testing, and production deployment across Dev, Test, and Prod environments.
• Ensure CI/CD implementation, version control, environment promotion, and release management.

Validation & Quality Assurance

• Establish validation frameworks to ensure functional parity between SAS and Databricks outputs.
• Validate record counts, data reconciliation, aggregations, statistical calculations, and business reports.
• Investigate discrepancies and coordinate remediation with SAS SMEs and engineering teams.
• Drive performance testing, scalability assessment, cluster sizing, and cost Eligible to workimization.
• Implement data quality checks, monitoring dashboards, exception reporting, and observability practices.
• Ensure migrated workloads meet business SLAs and operational requirements.

Stakeholder Management & Client Engagement

• Collaborate with business owners and SAS SMEs to preserve critical business rules and analytical flexibility.
• Present migration progress, risks, dependencies, and outcomes to client leadership and governance forums.
• Support solution walkthroughs, architecture discussions, and technical decision-making.
• Contribute to presales discussions, migration estimates, solution proposals, and scale-up planning as required.

Required Skills & Qualifications

Mandatory Skills

• 10-15+ years of overall experience in data platforms, analytics, data engineering, or enterprise modernization.
• Strong hands-on expertise in Base SAS, PROC SQL, SAS Macros, SAS datasets, and batch processing.
• Proven experience leading or delivering SAS-to-Databricks migrations or comparable SAS modernization initiatives.
• Strong understanding of data warehousing, ETL/ELT, data integration, and analytical pipelines.
• Experience with Databricks architecture and workloads on Azure or AWS.
• Working knowledge of PySpark, Spark SQL, and Delta Lake.
• Experience with data reconciliation, functional validation, performance tuning, and production deployment.
• Strong leadership, stakeholder management, problem-solving, and communication skills.

Preferred Skills

• Experience in insurance, actuarial analytics, statistical processing, or financial services.
• Exposure to insurance consulting or analytical use cases similar to Client/Mercer environments.
• Experience with automated SAS code conversion tools or migration accelerators.
• Knowledge of data governance, PII protection, regulatory compliance, and enterprise data controls.
• Experience with CI/CD, DevOps practices, cloud infrastructure, and cost Eligible to workimization.
• Prior client-facing consulting or large-scale transformation program experience.

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