Skip to main content
🇩🇪GDPR-compliant
Build smarter data systems with

Apache Spark Experts

matched in minutes from over 15,000 CVs

Hire experts who process large datasets, design streaming pipelines and tune Spark SQL workloads across cloud data platforms. FRATCH connects you with vetted, available freelancers through fast, precise AI matching.

Meet FRATCH Experts who have recently used Apache Spark

Verified expert

Peter S.

View profile

Senior AI, Data & Computer Vision Expert

Mannheim
Peter S.

Last position:

Senior ML Engineer & AI Researcher at Anonymous Client

Project: Defect Generation on Test-Bench Images of Metal Surfaces Environment: Automated Visual Inspection (AVI), Metallurgy & Manufacturing

  • Objective & Implementation: Designed, architected, and trained Generative Adversarial Networks (Pix2PixHD / SPADE) for image-to-image transformation. Targeted generation of synthetic material defects (e.g., cracks, inclusions, scale) on rough metal surfaces under real test-bench lighting conditions for privacy-compliant and efficient dataset expansion (data augmentation).
  • Technical Design: Implemented robust Generative AI and computer vision pipelines in Python and PyTorch. Used semantic segmentation approaches for mask-controlled defect synthesis and subsequent evaluation with EfficientDet object detection models.
  • Business Impact: Massive dataset upscaling (10x) without time-consuming and costly physical test-bench runs, while significantly improving the detection performance of automated inspection systems.

Technologies & Skills Used: Python | PyTorch | SPADE | Pix2PixHD | EfficientDet | Machine Learning | Semantic Segmentation | Computer Vision

Verified expert

Jens H.

View profile

Interim CTO / CDO & Enterprise Architect | AI Compliance & EU AI Act, Azure AI Foundry | Lawyer & Computer Scientist

Wathlingen
Jens H.

Last position:

Interim CTO (occasional assignments) at Fujitsu / FSAS

Stabilization of an Azure/.NET landscape in live operation.

  • Architecture, DevOps, and operational readiness; technical decisions under time pressure
  • Azure DevOps, monitoring, ETL/ELT, cloud security, FinOps, and data-mesh-related topics

Technologies: Azure DevOps, .NET, CI/CD, monitoring, FinOps

Verified expert

Fadi S.

View profile

AI Engineer | Microsoft Fabric | Data Engineering | Enterprise AI | Document AI

Oberhausen
Fadi S.

Last position:

Development of a production-ready Enterprise Document AI & Recommendation Platform at Freelancer

  • Development of a production-ready Enterprise AI solution for the automated processing of invoices and business documents
  • Integration of Azure AI Document Intelligence and LLM technologies into existing business processes
  • Development of robust REST APIs for automated document processing and system integration
  • Extraction, validation, and storage of structured invoice data in Azure SQL as a base for analytics and machine learning models
  • Development of an AI-based recommendation engine with machine learning and deep learning to generate personalized product recommendations based on historical purchase data
  • Implementation of logging, monitoring, error handling, and validation mechanisms for stable production use
  • Collaboration with business teams to define business rules and integrate the solution into existing enterprise processes

Technologies: Python, Azure AI Document Intelligence, Azure OpenAI, Azure SQL Database, REST APIs, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, OCR, Pandas, JSON, Workflow Automation

Verified expert

Michael N.

View profile

Senior ML Engineer | AI Engineer | Problem Solver

Eichenau
Michael N.

Last position:

Senior AI Engineer | Forward Deployed Engineer at Tiefbau

  • Development of an AI-powered project organization tool for a civil engineering company that intelligently links project, task, tender, schedule, and document data through a knowledge graph.
  • Implementation of AI features for document analysis, information extraction, context-based assistance, and voice-based data capture based on Microsoft Azure AI, reducing administrative effort, making information available faster, and supporting project teams in decision-making.
  • Tech stack: Python, React, TypeScript, FastAPI, Claude Code, Codex, Graphify, PostgreSQL, Microsoft Azure AI Foundry, Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Speech, Azure AI Document Intelligence, Microsoft Graph, Microsoft Entra ID, Docker, Git, CI/CD.
Verified expert

Mirza K.

View profile

Agentic AI for a DeepResearch project

München
Mirza K.

Last position:

Agentic Automation and a RAG system

  • This project involved extraction of intelligence data to support report writing for a company that provides geopolitical, global, commercial intelligence. The data have been gathered from a number of resources (interview transcripts, online data, internal documents), and then a knowledge base has been build from it. This was the basis of a complex RAG system, that was evaluated against a golden dataset. Agents have been used to find out the contradicting intelligence, the statements supporting each other, and to store back the generated knowledge.

Used: Python, RAG, LangGraph, LangChain, deepeval, MCP

Verified expert

Karin A.

View profile

Language Expert – Python Developer – AI Engineer

Leonberg
Karin A.

Last position:

AI Benchmark Engineer | Native language specialist German at Lilt

  • Task Engineering: Evaluating Coding Agents.
  • Asset Creation: Building realistic task environments using datasets and files in German. Crucially, these assets must remain in the target language to genuinely measure multilingual handling.
  • Prompting & Translation: finding failure points where AI does not work, in German.
  • Implementation & Verification: Supporting the development of robust solutions (reference implementations) and write highly reliable, deterministic verifier scripts (using rubric-based judging only when strictly necessary).
  • Calibration & Execution: Analyze execution logs and calibrate task difficulty (Easy to Very Hard) using standard Terminal-Bench run configurations against various model tiers (Haiku, Opus).
  • Quality Assurance: Participation in a rigorous, 4-layer human quality control process (creation, human review, calibration review, and audit) alongside automated LLM-based checks to ensure fairness, grammatical accuracy, and benchmark integrity.
  • Linguistic Review: Reviewing AI benchmark tasks across Hindi, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, Czech and Turkish.
Verified expert

Dennis O.

View profile

Product & AI Leader · Founder

Bösel
Dennis O.

Last position:

Co-Founder & CEO at Connect AI

AI Agent SaaS

Founded and built an AI agent SaaS for automated customer support and lead qualification, including implementation with pilot customers.

  • Service → product transformation: productization from the agency into an independent AI agent SaaS. The starting point was a specific customer problem; the product was developed together with the customer.
  • Developed and launched AI agents for website inbound, lead qualification, and customer service, reaching €8K MRR.
  • Structured and led a remote team across engineering, LLM ops, and customer enablement.
  • Case PTC Auto (e-commerce on Shopify): connected an AI support agent to the store, automated product data & support workflows, reducing workload by ~10–15 hours per week per support employee.
  • Set up GDPR-compliant data processing for the AI agents: data processing agreements, deletion policies, and customer data storage locations.
  • Assessed agents against the EU AI Act (risk class, transparency requirements) and built them accordingly.
  • Addressed customers’ compliance and security requirements (questionnaires, evidence, contracts) to make sales possible in the first place.
  • Built technical safeguards into the product to prevent agent misbehavior: hallucinations, escalation to humans, and logging.
Verified expert

Ajay Kumar D.

View profile

Senior BI and Analytics Engineer

Munich
Ajay Kumar D.

Last position:

Senior BI and Analytics Engineer at Novartis

  • Led enterprise reporting modernization by migrating legacy SSRS reporting solutions to Power BI, supporting 500+ business users while ensuring full GDPR/DSGVO compliance.
  • Designed and optimized Power BI and Microsoft Fabric semantic models using star schema, dimensional modeling, advanced DAX, and performance optimization techniques, reducing query latency by 25%.
  • Delivered 20+ executive and operational dashboards featuring KPI scorecards, drill-through, bookmarks, and row-level security, improving reporting efficiency by 20%.
  • Enabled self-service analytics through governed Power BI datasets, dataflows, and gateway architecture, increasing business-led reporting adoption by 35%.
  • Configured an incremental refresh policy and query folding for a 50+ million row sales dataset, reducing daily report refresh times by 85%.
  • Deployed automated ETL/ELT pipelines using Azure Data Factory, Microsoft Fabric, and Snowflake, reducing reporting delivery timelines by 40% through workflow automation.
  • Spearheaded Microsoft Fabric analytics modernization initiatives including lakehouse architecture, OneLake integration, and centralized data platform development, reducing data latency from 2 hours to 20 minutes.
  • Translated business requirements from 15+ stakeholders into scalable Power BI semantic models and dashboards, improving reporting consistency and reducing ad-hoc reporting requests by 25%.
  • Applied Microsoft Copilot and generative AI tools to accelerate SQL development, DAX authoring, technical documentation, and testing activities, reducing development effort by approximately 15 hours per week.
Verified expert

Hervé T.

View profile

Data Engineer & MS Fabric Expert

Oberhausen
Hervé T.

Last position:

Senior Data Engineer at Schweizerische Post AG

Tools: Fabric, AWS, dbt, Power BI, SQL, DWH, R, Python

  • Supported customers in implementing an architecture design for extracting and preparing data
  • Planned the design and implementation of the BI and DWH platform
  • Ensured the scalability and performance of the data platform
Verified expert

Alexander Z.

View profile

Senior Data Architect & Data Engineer

Berlin
Alexander Z.

Last position:

Senior Data Solutions Engineer at VMware Inc.

  • Architected and deployed private cloud data platform on VMware vSphere, integrating Greenplum MPP, Apache Kafka, Kubernetes, and Apache Solr, and developed real-time ingestion pipelines with Kafka Connect and Schema Registry.
  • Led Oracle Exadata to Greenplum migration, rearchitected data models, optimized storage, implemented RabbitMQ with Debezium for CDC, and deployed VectorDB for Generative AI.
  • Designed and executed multi-cloud migration PoC across AWS, Azure, and GCP, defined KPIs for throughput, latency, and cost efficiency, executed bulk data transfers, validated analytics and streaming workloads, and delivered full-scale architecture recommendations.
  • Assessed legacy on-premises infrastructure and designed modern cloud-native data platforms using Greenplum and containerized microservices, advising on scalability, disaster recovery, and high-availability.
Verified expert

Philipp G.

View profile

Machine Learning & Data Engineer

München
Philipp G.

Last position:

Data Scientist & ML Engineer at Data-Science Factory GmbH

  • Building, implementing and selling automated Data Science solutions such as Scorecard Factory and Forecast Factory
  • Implementation of automated end-to-end cloud processes
  • Development of LLM and NLP models
  • Creation of interactive reports
  • Support for national and international large corporations as well as medium-sized companies in implementing ML projects
Verified expert

Tamás E.

View profile

Senior Software Developer / Tech Lead

Munich
Tamás E.

Last position:

Senior Software Developer / Tech Lead at NDA (defense / OSINT)

  • Designing the audit logging framework
  • Implementing APIs for developers to integrate in their codebase
  • Implementing ingestion pipeline, database query layer and UI for browsing the audit events
  • Improving stability and reliability of the backend system
Verified expert

Ajay C.

View profile

Software Developer & AI Engineer | Python, RESTful APIs, CI/CD, DevOps

Braunschweig
Ajay C.

Last position:

Software Engineer & Cloud AI Developer at TANGILITY GmbH

Built Python-based AI microservices and integrations for an AEC/VR Unity-based SaaS app, focusing on LLM/VLM capabilities, retrieval-backed systems, RESTful APIs, containerized deployment, and an automation microservice for the CAD-to-Unity pipeline.

  • Developed a custom Hybrid A* based algorithm in C# to simulate hospital scenarios and detect early-stage design conflicts from collision/spatial data and generate structured reports.
  • Solved and automated the time-consuming problem of converting CAD files to usable Unity environments with a custom-engineered and real-time pipeline using a ZeroMQ-based communication layer to distribute workloads across multiple processes and achieve real-time performance.
  • Built a Dockerized FastAPI pipeline for CAD-to-Unity automation, combining vision-based object matching, image embeddings, and precomputed metadata to automatically map CAD objects to Unity behavior scripts, assign properties, and reduce repeated AI inference calls.
  • Created documentation and examples to help technical users understand, configure, and extend the AI automation pipeline.
Verified expert

Alexander B.

View profile

Senior Data Engineer

Köln
Alexander B.

Last position:

Senior Data Engineer at RWE AG

Architected and maintained data products for renewable energy operations, covering wind turbine, grid-meter, and weather data. Built scalable ETL/ELT pipelines in Azure Databricks using Delta Lake (bronze/silver/gold layers) and processed data in various formats, including structured and semi-structured data. Contributed to a data quality framework supporting table and column documentation, outlier detection, and completeness metrics across all datasets within a data product. In addition, implemented a DORA KPI Databricks dashboard used across all data products. Optimized CI/CD processes in Azure DevOps to streamline deployment across development, test, and production environments.

Technology stack: Azure Databricks, PySpark, SQL, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Azure Data Lake, APIs, Dremio, Azure DevOps, YAML, Git, Databricks Workflows, Application Insights, Terraform, OpenAI API, Codex, LLM-assisted workflows

Discover over 15,000 top freelancers

Statistics of experts using Apache Spark

Aggregated from the professional profiles of matched freelancers.

Experience

14 years

Apache Spark experts have 14 years of professional experience on average.

Position duration

2.7 years

Apache Spark experts stay in a single position for 2.7 years on average.

Positions per freelancer

10

Apache Spark experts have completed 10 positions on average over the course of their careers.

Top business areas

Information Technology, Business Intelligence, Product Development

Apache Spark experts have gathered most of their hands-on project experience in Information Technology, Business Intelligence, and Product Development.

Top industries

Information Technology, Banking and Finance, Automotive

Apache Spark experts are most in demand in Information Technology, Banking and Finance, and Automotive.

Certification focus areas

Information Technology, Business Intelligence, Research and Development

Apache Spark experts earn their certifications most often in Information Technology, Business Intelligence, and Research and Development.

Bachelor's degree or higher

97%

97% of Apache Spark experts hold at least a Bachelor's degree.

Master's degree or higher

71%

71% of Apache Spark experts hold at least a Master's degree.

Doctorate

13%

13% of Apache Spark experts have a doctorate (PhD).

Certifications per freelancer

3

Apache Spark experts hold 3 professional certifications on average.

Most common languages

English, German, French

Apache Spark experts most often speak English, German, and French.

Speak two or more languages

97%

97% of Apache Spark experts speak two or more languages.

Based on our profile pool as of 26 Sep 2026.

Daily rate distribution

0% 25% 50% 75% 100%
9% of Apache Spark experts charge less than €400 per day.
41% of Apache Spark experts charge between €400 and €800 per day.
45% of Apache Spark experts charge between €800 and €1200 per day.
4% of Apache Spark experts charge between €1200 and €1600 per day.
1% of Apache Spark experts charge €1600 or more per day.
<€400 €400-​800 €800-​1200 €1200-​1600 €1600+

The chart shows how the daily rates of experts in this technology are distributed, based on recent contracts on our platform. Each bar covers a rate range — its height shows the share of experts charging within that range.

Average rates of experts using Apache Spark

Rates are based on recent contracts and do not include FRATCH margin.

800
600
400
200
Rate comparison chart
Daily rate avg. 742 €

The average daily rate is the mean of all daily rates from recent contracts of comparable freelancers on our platform.

800
600
400
200
Rate comparison chart
Median rate 780 €

The median daily rate is the middle value of all daily rates — half of comparable freelancers charge less, half charge more. Unlike the average, it is barely affected by outliers.

Calculated based on our freelancers’ daily rates as of 26 Sep 2026. Actual rates may vary depending on seniority level, experience, skill specialization, project complexity, and engagement length.

Apache Spark experts industry focus

See which industries our matched freelancers work in most often — every figure is calculated live from the freelancers on FRATCH.

  • Information Technology (90%)
  • Banking and Finance (47%)
  • Automotive (42%)
  • Manufacturing (40%)
  • Professional Services (40%)
  • Education (34%)
  • Retail (30%)
  • Energy (29%)

Please note that freelancers can work across multiple industries, so percentages overlap.

About the technology

Distributed Data Processing

Apache Spark is an open-source engine for processing large datasets across clusters. Companies use it for batch analytics, interactive queries, machine learning pipelines and real-time stream processing. Its in-memory execution and unified APIs support workloads that would be slow or difficult to run on a single machine.

Core APIs and Languages

Spark professionals work with DataFrame and Dataset APIs, Spark SQL, Structured Streaming and the resilient distributed dataset model. They commonly use Scala, Python through PySpark, Java or SQL, depending on the existing data platform. Strong solutions balance readable transformations with partitioning, serialization and resource efficiency.

Ecosystem and Tooling

Apache Spark often runs alongside storage, orchestration and governance tools in a wider data ecosystem. Relevant expertise may include:

  • Delta Lake, Apache Iceberg or Apache Hudi for managed table formats
  • Apache Kafka for event ingestion and streaming workloads
  • Airflow, Databricks Workflows or other orchestration systems
  • Kubernetes, YARN or cloud services for cluster deployment
  • Hive Metastore, catalogs and access-control practices

Typical Delivery Work

Freelance specialists are brought in to modernize data pipelines, migrate legacy processing jobs and establish reliable lakehouse workflows. They may deliver ingestion layers, transformation jobs, streaming applications, feature pipelines, query models or production runbooks. They also connect Spark with warehouses, object storage, APIs and business intelligence tools.

When Expertise Matters

Companies usually need outside support when workloads grow, processing costs rise or existing jobs become difficult to operate. Signs include:

  • Long-running jobs caused by skew, poor joins or excessive shuffles
  • Streaming pipelines that lose events or fall behind during demand peaks
  • Batch processes that lack testing, observability or recovery controls
  • A move from on-premises clusters to cloud or Kubernetes infrastructure
  • New machine learning or analytics use cases that need dependable data

What Strong Specialists Deliver

Effective Apache Spark professionals understand both distributed computation and the business purpose behind each pipeline. They inspect execution plans, select suitable partitioning, manage schemas and validate data quality instead of relying on default settings. They document deployment, monitoring and failure handling so internal teams can operate the result after handover.

Published on:
FRATCH GPT

FRATCH GPT delivers freelancer proposals with clear reasoning and transparent pricing in minutes, helping your hiring department quickly and compliantly find the best talent.

Give it a try:

Try FRATCH GPT

Frequently asked questions

Curious about Apache Spark? Here are the answers that come up again and again.

Apache Spark is used for distributed batch processing, SQL analytics, real-time streams and machine learning data preparation. It can combine data from object storage, databases, event systems and enterprise applications in one processing workflow.

Apache Spark generally offers a more unified programming model and is often faster for iterative or interactive workloads because it can keep intermediate data in memory. Hadoop MapReduce remains relevant for some durable batch patterns, but Spark is usually more flexible for mixed analytics and streaming projects.

Apache Spark can transform and query large datasets, but it does not replace every warehouse function. A strong design may use Spark for ingestion and complex processing while a warehouse or lakehouse query layer serves governed reporting and business users.

A strong Apache Spark specialist often brings PySpark or Scala, SQL, data modeling and cloud storage knowledge. Experience with Kafka, Delta Lake, Iceberg, Airflow, Kubernetes, catalog management and observability is also valuable for production delivery.

The right level depends on workload complexity, not on the technology name alone. A contained batch pipeline may need solid API and testing skills, while streaming, cluster migration or performance tuning calls for experience with execution plans, failures, security and operations.

Apache Spark projects can work effectively with remote professionals when repositories, sample data, environments and acceptance criteria are accessible. Clear documentation and scheduled reviews matter because debugging distributed jobs often requires shared visibility into logs, schemas and execution plans.

Ask the Apache Spark specialist to explain partitioning, join strategy, data skew, schema handling and recovery behavior in practical terms. Review tests, execution plans, monitoring, cost controls and documentation rather than judging a pipeline only by whether it completes successfully.

Common Apache Spark issues include data skew, unnecessary shuffles, oversized or tiny files, inefficient joins and poor partition sizing. A capable specialist profiles the workload, reads the physical plan and changes the data layout or transformations before increasing cluster resources.

The average hourly rate of freelancers who have used Apache Spark in their recent projects is 93 €, which corresponds to a daily rate of about 742 € based on an 8-hour working day.

Of the freelancers who have used Apache Spark in their recent projects, 97% hold at least a Bachelor's degree, 71% hold at least a Master's degree, and 13% hold a doctorate.

On average, freelancers who have used Apache Spark in their recent projects have 14 years of professional experience, with a single engagement typically lasting around 2.7 years.

The most common languages among freelancers who have used Apache Spark in their recent projects are English (98%), German (98%), and French (20%).

The most common industries among freelancers who have used Apache Spark in their recent projects are Information Technology (90%), Banking and Finance (47%), and Automotive (42%).

The most common business areas among freelancers who have used Apache Spark in their recent projects are Information Technology (97%), Business Intelligence (85%), and Product Development (79%).

Main locations of FRATCH Experts, who have recently used Apache Spark

Our freelancers and interim experts are at home all over Germany — available on-site in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and every major business hub, or fully remote. Choose a city to discover matched specialists, local market insights and up-to-date availability.

Berlin Hamburg Munich Cologne Frankfurt Stuttgart Dusseldorf Leipzig Dortmund Essen Bremen Dresden Hanover Nuremberg

In Austria our freelancers and interim experts support companies from Vienna to Graz — on-site where your project needs them, or fully remote. Choose a city to discover matched specialists, local market insights and up-to-date availability.

Vienna Graz

Across Switzerland our specialists are active in Zurich, Geneva, Basel and Bern — working on-site or fully remote. Choose a city to discover matched specialists, local market insights and up-to-date availability.

Zurich Geneva Basel Bern

Countries:

Request a free demo

Get in touch with the FRATCH team and we will get back to you within 4 hours.

Contact form

Would you rather directly get in touch?
We always have the time for a call or email!

FRATCH CEO avatar

Philipp Thomaschewski

FRATCH CEO

LinkedInFRATCH