Senior Data Engineer, IT Enterprise Data Solutions
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation9 days ago
Base Salary
$173k - $260k/yr
Responsibilities
- Design, develop, test, deploy, and support configuration-driven ELT/ETL pipelines from enterprise applications, databases, APIs, file repositories, partner sources, and shared data exchanges.
- Build reusable ingestion and transformation patterns for structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data, including relational data, JSON, XML, CSV, Excel, and document metadata.
- Develop curated data products and dimensional models using star and snowflake techniques for reporting, semantic models, analytics, and operational use cases.
- Implement transformations and modernize legacy warehouse and ETL patterns using SQL, Python, Spark/PySpark, Databricks notebooks, dbt Cloud, Snowpark, lakehouse, cloud warehouse, and ELT architectures.
- Monitor and optimize pipelines, storage, compute, and databases for performance, scalability, availability, and cost efficiency.
- Implement data quality, reconciliation, exception handling, observability, logging, alerting, service-level measures, and production incident response practices.
- Apply secure engineering practices involving managed identity, role-based access, encryption, secrets management, least-privilege access, and sensitive-data handling.
- Maintain CI/CD, automated testing, version control, release management, and environment promotion practices for data workloads.
- Build governed data and document pipelines supporting enterprise search, AI-assisted knowledge discovery, retrieval-augmented generation, analytics, and data science.
- Prepare source data, metadata, permissions, lineage, and quality signals for reliable AI solutions while preserving source-system security policies.
- Partner with Knowledge Management, AI, Business Intelligence, and Information Security teams on data products, model grounding, evaluation, and responsible use.
- Evaluate emerging data and AI platform capabilities through proofs of concept and recommend adoption based on value, security, sustainability, and architectural fit.
- Conduct design and code reviews, contribute to engineering standards, and promote reusable patterns for modeling, orchestration, testing, observability, and documentation.
- Collaborate with architects and product teams to clarify requirements, assess trade-offs, estimate delivery, and create implementation plans.
- Mentor data engineers and contingent staff, coordinate small delivery efforts, and maintain technical documentation, runbooks, mappings, lineage, and operational procedures.
- Contribute metadata and descriptions for synchronization with Collibra and work in Scrum, Jira, and DevSecOps delivery environments.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, data engineering, information systems, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
- Typically 7+ years of relevant data engineering experience in enterprise environments, including production data platforms and pipelines.
- Strong hands-on expertise with Azure data services, Databricks, Snowflake, and dbt Cloud; Azure Data Factory and Fivetran experience is strongly preferred.
- Advanced SQL and Python proficiency, plus practical Spark/PySpark or Scala experience and cloud scripting or automation experience.
- Experience with lakehouse, cloud data warehouse, ELT/ETL, and medallion or layered data architecture patterns.
- Experience with dimensional modeling, data normalization, slowly changing dimensions, point-in-time history, and enterprise data quality practices.
- Experience building CI/CD pipelines for data workloads, automated testing, infrastructure-as-code or configuration-as-code, and modern version control workflows.
- Strong understanding of data security, privacy, access controls, encryption, lineage, retention, and governance in cloud data environments.
- Power BI experience and experience with metadata or governance platforms such as Collibra are preferred.
- Demonstrated ability to enable AI through data, including requirements for search, retrieval-augmented generation, metadata, permissions, lineage, scalability, and evaluation.
- Proven ability to diagnose production issues, lead technical problem solving, and implement corrective actions.
- Experience working with vendors or distributed engineering teams and reviewing deliverables for enterprise standards and maintainability.
- Excellent written and verbal communication, sound judgment, and ability to explain complex technical concepts to varied audiences.
- Demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and respectful collaboration.
- Must have unrestricted work authorization in the country where the position is located.
- Employment is contingent upon successful completion of a background check.
Benefits
- Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums.
- Generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, and regional holidays.
- Opportunities to engage in employee communities and an inclusive, accessible workplace.
- Seattle-based role with offices also located in Washington, D.C.
- The foundation does not provide immigration-related sponsorship for this role.
- Hiring includes a standard background check and accommodations are available during the hiring process.
Tech Stack
Categories
Data Engineering
About Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is a Seattle-based private nonprofit that funds global health, development, U.S. education, and gender equality through grants and program-related investments. Founded in 2000, it partners with governments, researchers, and NGOs to fight infectious disease, improve agriculture and financial inclusion, and expand equitable learning opportunities. Its endowment, backed by Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, and Warren Buffett, finances long-term initiatives in low- and middle-income countries.