Senior Data Engineer (FedD238)

The role

The Senior Data Engineer will build and maintain data pipelines to make enterprise data usable for AI models, agents, and mission applications. This role focuses on building data foundations and repeatable patterns in secure and classified environments.

What you will do

• Design, build, and maintain reliable data pipelines for AI models, agents, and mission applications.
• Integrate structured and unstructured data sources into enterprise data services.
• Work with AI/agent engineers to make data discoverable for RAG, semantic search, and agent workflows.
• Develop repeatable data ingestion and transformation patterns using Python, SQL, APIs, and orchestration technologies.
• Establish data quality, validation, provenance, lineage, and metadata practices.
• Design data access patterns that enforce identity, authorization, classification, and security boundaries.
• Collaborate with platform engineers to operationalize data services within Kubernetes/OpenShift environments.
• Integrate enterprise data capabilities into the broader platform architecture.
• Troubleshoot end-to-end data issues across infrastructure, applications, and storage.
• Work with government engineers and commercial technology partners to resolve data dependencies.

Required qualifications

• Active TS/SCI clearance.
• 7+ years of experience in data engineering, data platform engineering, or a closely related field.
• Strong proficiency with SQL and Python for data processing, automation, and integration.
• Hands-on experience building and operating production data pipelines and ETL/ELT workflows.
• Experience with relational databases and modern data storage patterns for structured and unstructured data.
• Experience integrating data through REST APIs, message/event systems, or other distributed integration patterns.
• Working knowledge of data modeling, schema design, data quality, lineage, metadata, and data governance concepts.
• Experience operating in cloud-native or containerized environments and collaborating with Kubernetes/platform engineering teams.
• Ability to troubleshoot data issues across infrastructure, applications, APIs, storage, networking, and access controls.
• Ability to work independently, rapidly learn new technologies, and translate ambiguous mission needs into working data solutions.

Nice to have

• GEOINT experience
• Experience supporting AI/ML workloads, including RAG, embeddings, vector search, model context, or agentic applications.
• Experience with vector databases, graph databases, document databases, knowledge graphs, or semantic search technologies.
• Experience with Oracle or comparable enterprise data platforms.
• Experience designing data products or platforms for high-scale, low-latency, or mission-critical workloads.
• Experience with data orchestration and workflow tools such as Airflow, Dagster, Argo Workflows, or comparable technologies.
• Experience with streaming/event platforms such as Kafka, Redpanda, NATS, or similar technologies.
• Experience deploying data services using Kubernetes, Helm, GitOps, Infrastructure as Code, and automated CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience supporting data and AI systems in Secret or TS/SCI environments and across multiple security domains.
• Experience with disconnected or air-gapped environments.

Benefits

• Medical/Dental/Vision
• Premiums are 100% Company Paid
• Health Savings Account
• Life Insurance
• Disability Insurance
• 401k Retirement Plan
• Company Stock Options
• Home Office Budget
• Flexible Time Off (FTO) plus all Federal Holidays, one week for Thanksgiving, and two weeks for Christmas and New Year’s
• Paid Parental Leave
• Reimbursement for approved trainings/subscriptions
• Conferences (travel, lodging, and fees)

Before you apply

• Active TS/SCI clearance required.

About the company

Defense Unicorns delivers mission value by streamlining software delivery so customers can focus on the most important challenges. They create and deliver secure solutions for continuous software integration and delivery.