Senior Technical Product Owner - Data Platform

Join DHCS’s Behavioral Health Transformation: Where Purpose Meets InnovationSperidian Technologies is recruiting for a Senior Technical Product Owner - Data Platform (Databricks) for our State of California Client, the Department of Healthcare Services, Behavioral Health. This person will be part of a long-term, fully budgeted, state-of-the-art, extremely vast technical modernization project working with a variety of cross-functional teams and stakeholders.
This is a remote role; however, there may meetings in the Sacramento area during the year.  Candidates are expected to work business hours, Monday-Friday, Pacific Time Zone.
Join DHCS’s Behavioral Health Transformation: Where Purpose Meets Innovation
Location: Remote in the United States
Department: Department of Healthcare Services (DHCS)
Commitment: Full-Time Consultant (W2 employee of Speridian or 1099/IC for Speridian) 

Why DHCS?
At DHCS we are leading a transformative journey in Behavioral Health, reshaping systems and services to ensure better outcomes for communities across California. Our Behavioral Health transformation initiative is more than a project—it’s a movement to make California a leader in accessible, high-quality health services. We’re setting the stage for a new era of government services built on agile methodologies, cutting-edge technology, continuous improvement, and a relentless commitment to serving the public good.

At DHCS, we’re looking for innovators who are passionate about purposeful work and excited by the opportunity to drive lasting change through innovative solutions.

Our Core Values (Achieve Together, Be Curious, Elevate Yourself, and Deliver Value)

• We achieve together by championing a team-oriented workplace built on mutual respect, collaboration, and open communication.

• We encourage individuals and teams to constantly be curious and seek a deeper understanding and fresh ideas that drive innovation and meaningful change.

• We provide a supportive workplace where you can elevate yourself and achieve personal growth through continuous learning, focused effort, and perseverance.

• We deliver value as part of every action we take to serve California’s citizens
  We work within government, for government—but we don’t work like government
  We’re agile in practice and philosophy
  We’re purpose-driven and outcome-obsessed
  We’re modernizing behavioral health technology in California—including addressing overdose, suicide, and the crises that leave people on the streets
  We’re honest about the challenges—state government is bureaucratic, and we can't match most tech salaries. But here’s what we can offer:
  Purpose that matters
  Teammates who care deeply
  Work-life balance (no nights, weekends, offshore or burnout)
  Fully remote work
  We're not just changing legacy tech into modern, scalable tech—we're changing how the government sector uses technology

Senior Technical Product Owner - Data Platform (Databricks)
Description
The Senior Technical Product Owner owns the architecture, build-out, governance, privacy enforcement, contract management, and ongoing evolution of DHCS’s flagship self-service data platform on Databricks Lakehouse, fully implemented in a data mesh architecture tailored to the healthcare domain—focusing on behavioral health (BH) data products, SUD records, and compliance with HIPAA, 42 CFR Part 2 (aligned for treatment/payment/healthcare operations), state/federal BH reporting, and privacy regulations.
This deeply technical role owns the central platform engineering backlog and drives rigorous alignment across domain teams, data stewards, policy/compliance experts, and business priorities to enable domain autonomy, treat data as interoperable products, provide frictionless self-serve infrastructure, and enforce federated computational governance via Unity Catalog integrated with Collibra for enterprise cataloging, lineage, quality, stewardship, and policy enforcement.
Core technical pillars include:

• Data contracts 
• REST APIs & API contracts 
• Semantic view layer 
• PHI/PII privacy protections 
• Data governance & stewardship 

This role translates strategic vision, OKRs, strict regulatory needs (e.g., 42 CFR Part 2/HIPAA alignment for SUD records), domain/steward inputs, and healthcare interoperability requirements into precise technical backlogs that deliver platform excellence: high adoption, semantic/contract reliability, API usability, PHI/PII protection, governance maturity, performance, scalability, and resilience in a regulated healthcare environment.
Responsibilities
Backlog Ownership & Prioritization

• Own, rigorously refine, and maintain the technical backlog, prioritizing privacy, governance, stewardship, data/API contracts, REST API enablement, and AI/ML enablement for BH healthcare use cases.
• Translate policy/program (BH reporting, SUD confidentiality), compliance (HIPAA/42 CFR Part 2), steward, risk, and interoperability requirements into detailed epics, features, technical stories, and non-functional criteria (e.g., contract validation SLAs, masking enforcement, API versioning policies).

Strategic Alignment & Delivery

• Partner with Product Managers, engineering leads, domain owners (BH/counties/MCPs), stewards, and API teams to define ambitious OKRs focused on data mesh maturity, semantic excellence, contract-driven reliability, API self-service, PHI/PII privacy-by-design, and federated governance in healthcare.
• Align priorities with DHCS goals, regulatory mandates (state/federal BH reporting, 42 CFR Part 2/HIPAA alignment), open standards (e.g., ODCS for contracts), and multi-year roadmaps for lakehouse, semantic layer, contracts/APIs, privacy, governance, and AI/ML scaling.

Platform Architecture & Build-Out

• Architect self-service capabilities: automated workspace provisioning, Unity Catalog federated governance (fine-grained access, lineage, Delta Sharing), Delta Lake/Delta Live Tables pipelines, medallion architectures, streaming/batch/ML support for BH analytics.
• Design/evolve the semantic view layer (Unity Catalog Metric Views/YAML) for reusable, governed BH metrics/dimensions, integrated with Collibra for metadata propagation and quality.
• Build data contracts framework: YAML/ODCS specs for schema/semantics/quality/SLAs/ownership; enforce via CI/CD validation, Unity Catalog tags/schemas, programmatic checks (breaking-change detection) to ensure interoperability across counties/MCPs.
• Design REST APIs for data product exposure: secure endpoints (Delta Sharing/custom REST via gateways), API contracts (OpenAPI) for versioning/auth/documentation/discoverability in Collibra, supporting programmatic BH reporting/oversight.
• Implement enterprise-grade PHI/PII privacy protections for BH/SUD data: automated classification (Unity Catalog AI), dynamic masking/row filtering (ABAC/SQL functions), encryption (CMK), de-identification patterns, auditing—enforced through data/API contracts and 42 CFR Part 2/HIPAA alignment.
• Lead Unity Catalog + Collibra integration: metadata/lineage sync, policy pushdown (Protect for row/column enforcement), business glossaries, quality rules, contract metadata propagation, stewardship workflows.
• Enable federated data stewardship: domain stewards (e.g., BH program/counties) own local contracts/quality/compliance with central enforcement via platform tools.
• Drive non-functional excellence: performance (Photon/Liquid Clustering), security/resilience, observability, audit trails for privacy/contracts/APIs in healthcare.

Stakeholder & Policy Integration

• Partner closely with policy teams, domain stewards, Collibra admins, external partners (counties, MCPs, QHIOs), and engineers to define federated standards (data/API contracts, privacy SLAs, quality thresholds, classification policies, steward responsibilities) and validate BH outputs.
• Ensure platform enforces BH policy, state/federal reporting standards, privacy regulations (HIPAA/42 CFR Part 2 for SUD), contract reliability, and API governance in a decentralized yet auditable, compliant manner.

Metrics & Continuous Improvement

• Define/track platform metrics: adoption velocity, semantic coverage, Collibra quality scores, data contract coverage/enforcement, API usage, PHI/PII classification/masking rate, contract violation incidents, steward satisfaction, compliance coverage (BH reporting accuracy/timeliness), pipeline SLAs.
• Prioritize backlog to eliminate contract/API/privacy friction, reduce governance risks, boost trustworthiness/interoperability, and accelerate steward/domain value in healthcare.
• Lead POCs, benchmarks, and testing (e.g., contract validation, API integrations, new Unity Catalog/Collibra features for BH compliance).

Collaboration & Leadership

• Lead technical agile ceremonies across platform/domain/stewardship/Collibra/policy/API teams.
• Champion data users (BH analysts, leadership, counties) while enforcing architectural rigor in lakehouse, data mesh, semantic layers, contracts/APIs, privacy, and governance.
• Provide thought leadership on Databricks patterns (Unity Catalog contracts/ABAC + Delta Sharing APIs), Collibra synergies, data mesh contract/API/stewardship models in regulated healthcare/BH, and best practices for PHI/PII/SUD handling.

Skills

• Advanced backlog/roadmap management for self-service platforms in healthcare data mesh/lakehouse with privacy/governance/semantic/contract/API focus.
• Deep fluency in data engineering: ETL/ELT, medallion, entity resolution, semantic layers, streaming, data contracts (YAML/ODCS), API contracts (OpenAPI), observability.
• Mastery of Databricks lakehouse (performance/governance/privacy/contracts) + Collibra (catalog/quality/stewardship/Protect) + PHI/PII patterns + REST/API patterns in BH contexts.
• Comfort prototyping/validating in Python/SQL/Spark, including contract validation, API mocks, and privacy controls.
• Data-driven prioritization with OKR/metrics emphasis on contract health, API reliability, privacy/governance maturity, adoption, steward enablement in healthcare.
• Exceptional technical communication to align engineers, stewards, domains, executives, regulators/policy teams.
• Full operational ownership: backlog, incidents, risk/privacy/contract mitigation, capacity—ensuring production stability/resilience/SLAs/compliance.
• Strategic thinking: balance delivery with long-term vision (scalability, AI readiness for BH insights, contract/API/governance maturity).
• Leadership in highly regulated, cross-functional healthcare settings with tough trade-offs (privacy vs. accessibility, contract rigor vs. usability).

Additional Preferred Skills

• Hands-on with Unity Catalog advanced features (Data Classification AI, ABAC, Metric Views composability) + Collibra Protect + data contract tools (e.g., ODCS validation).
• Experience defining federated contract/API/stewardship models in healthcare data mesh (domain contracts + central PHI/PII/SUD policies, versioning, Delta Sharing APIs).
• Nice-to-have: Strong experience in entity resolution and Master Data Management (MDM) — including probabilistic/fuzzy matching algorithms, golden record creation, duplicate detection/merging, and ML-driven resolution patterns (e.g., for patient/provider/entity unification across disparate BH/SUD sources like EMRs, claims, counties/MCPs) to enhance data quality, trustworthiness, and interoperability in regulated healthcare environments. 
• Nice-to-have: Proven experience delivering AI/ML capabilities for data scientists — including self-serve ML workflows on Databricks (e.g., Mosaic AI for model training/fine-tuning/serving/evaluation/agent frameworks/RAG/GenAI, MLflow for experiment tracking/model registry, feature stores, inference tables, Unity Catalog governance for AI assets/models, secure model serving endpoints) to enable governed, scalable AI/ML in a data mesh (e.g., domain-owned predictive models for BH risk/outcomes, anomaly detection, GenAI-assisted insights) while maintaining PHI/PII compliance and federated access.
• Knowledge of BH/SUD privacy/security (de-identification, consent, differential privacy) + enterprise integrations/API gateways.

Speridian is an equal opportunity employer