Staff Data Engineer

Code for America is a nonprofit organization that uses technology to improve government and community services. The Staff Data Engineer will lead the technical execution of scalable data infrastructure, including pipelines, data transfers, transformation, integration, validation, and governance. The role also provides technical leadership, mentorship, and collaboration across data science, engineering, product, and DevOps teams.

Responsibilities:

• Lead cross-functional technical planning with Data Scientists, Software Engineers, and Product Managers to translate data architecture requirements into scalable technical solutions for your team's projects
• Create new data pipelines, data transfers, and compliance-oriented infrastructure to facilitate seamless data utilization within cloud environments
• Contribute to best practices for dataset management and optimization, ensuring data consistency and performance
• Implement data transformation, integration, and validation processes to support analytics and reporting needs
• Partner with our DevOps team to apply deployment standards, monitoring frameworks, and operational best practices for data infrastructure
• Lead technical investigations into data issues within the systems you own, resolving them with thorough communication and recommending process changes where necessary
• Optimize and fine-tune data pipelines for improved speed, reliability, and efficiency
• Lead generation and optimization of data architecture recommendations and demonstrate the ability to implement them
• Champion privacy, security, and data governance practices throughout the entire data lifecycle
• Support Engineering's culture of writing by producing quality documentation and learning materials
• Contribute to the development of data engineering best practices and standards, and reinforce them across the team
• Collaborate with Product Managers and other cross-functional peers; adapt your approach as priorities, technology, and team needs shift; and actively help others do the same when facing major changes in direction or tooling
• Mentor engineers and data scientists on data engineering best practices, pipeline design, and sound architectural thinking, and create conditions for them to grow into unfamiliar problem spaces through pairing, documentation, or direct coaching
• Engage in ad hoc projects and initiatives as required by the organization's evolving needs

Requirements:

• 7+ years of experience in data engineering or related technical fields
• Expert-level SQL and experience with python, R
• Experience with Postgres and cloud-based data warehousing (e.g. BigQuery, Snowflake)
• Expert at data orchestration tools (e.g. Dagster) for building and managing data pipelines
• Expert at using dbt for data transformation and modeling within data warehouses
• Demonstrated experience with Metabase or similar business intelligence tools (e.g. Tableau, PowerBI, Looker)
• Experience in ensuring that data pipelines are accessible to Data Scientists through notebook tools (e.g. Hex)
• Experience with cloud infrastructure and infrastructure as code
• Excellent collaboration skills, with a demonstrated ability to manage cross-functional relationships, respond to stakeholder needs, and facilitate effective decision-making conversations
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English
• Demonstrated ability to use AI coding tools judiciously, validating and refining generated code for quality, and modeling that discipline for teammates is needed for this specific role; organizationally, a curiosity about emerging AI tools and a commitment to using them responsibly and effectively
• A deep commitment to Code for America's mission of making government services work well for the people who need them most
• This role will report to a Data Science Manager and is expected to travel no more than 10% of the time
• Code for America is based in California and can employ those who reside full-time within the United States. This is a remote position
• Experience with making government services better for people who need them most
• Personal or professional experience with the social safety net or other mission-relevant government services
• Experience building and integrating AI-powered features in production systems, with evaluation and monitoring