Data Engineer

Bixal is a consulting company headquartered in Fairfax, VA, working alongside governments and organizations to help them deliver better services and experiences to the communities they serve. They are seeking a skilled and motivated Data Engineer to join their dynamic team to build and optimize data pipelines using technologies such as PySpark, Databricks, and AWS.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the design and implementation of complex data ingestion pipelines using PySpark, Databricks Intelligence Platform, and AWS services (S3, IAM roles and policies), including Kafka/streaming architectures, schema evolution, and Delta Share, ensuring alignment with enterprise architecture standards
• Serve as a subject matter expert (SME) for data engineering, providing technical guidance and mentorship to engineers across the team and representing data engineering in cross-functional discussions
• Take ownership of platform reliability and performance, proactively identifying optimization opportunities across data ingestion, transformation, and storage layers. Troubleshoot complex pipeline failures across multi-system dependencies
• Lead cross-functional technical initiatives, collaborating with data scientists, analysts, DevOps engineers, client teams (upstream data providers and downstream consumers), and stakeholders to deliver integrated solutions that meet program objectives
• Contribute to the data platform technical vision and architecture, making strategic decisions on tooling, frameworks, and design patterns that shape the program's long-term data engineering direction
• Define and enforce engineering standards, including code quality, testing practices, CI/CD processes, and infrastructure as code patterns using Terraform
• Evaluation of new technologies and approaches, presenting proof of concepts and technical roadmaps to leadership
• Author and maintain architectural documentation, technical decision records, and platform runbooks that enable team autonomy and operational excellence
• Other relevant duties as assigned and qualified/trained to perform

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree
• Minimum of 5 years of experience in Data Engineering
• Demonstrated experience serving as a technical SME and leading cross-functional engineering initiatives
• Proficiency in Python for data engineering tasks at scale
• Deep expertise with Databricks Intelligence Platform (Notebooks, Lakeflow Jobs, Unity Catalog, Delta Share) and the ability to define platform standards and best practices for the team
• Experience with AWS services such as S3 and IAM roles and policies
• Strong knowledge of data pipeline design and implementation, including data transformation techniques, data modeling, data storage optimization, and data security best practices
• Proficiency in using version control systems like Git for managing code repositories and collaborating with team members on Agile projects
• Familiarity with Terraform or other infrastructure as code tools for automating infrastructure deployment and configuration management
• Experience working on Linux environments for data engineering projects, including accessing containers remotely, installing packages, managing files, services, and processes
• Advanced working SQL knowledge and experience working with relational databases, query authoring (SQL) as well as working familiarity with a variety of databases
• Experience performing root cause analysis on internal and external data and processes to answer specific business questions and identify opportunities for improvement
• Strong problem-solving skills, ability to work independently and as part of a team, and excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Comfortable working in a highly collaborative environment with strong attention to detail and a commitment to delivering high-quality software
• Ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust security clearance
• Bachelor's degree in a technology field
• Familiarity with cloud computing concepts, particularly as they apply to data engineering, is a plus
• Experience working with other data frameworks such as Apache Hive, Apache Hadoop, or Apache Spark is a plus
• Federal consulting experience
• Databricks certifications (Associate Data Engineer or Professional Data Engineer)
• Experience with business intelligence tools (e.g., QuickSight, Power BI) for building data observability or usage reporting