Data Engineer, California College Guidance Initiative

The Foundation for California Community Colleges is hiring a Data Engineer for its autonomous California College Guidance Initiative (CCGI). The role develops and maintains cloud data infrastructure, data pipelines, and analytics tools using AWS, Snowflake, and related technologies to support CCGI’s education-focused work.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the development, maintenance, and optimization of batch and streaming ETL/ELT processes, including the development, refinement, and containerization of data loading and processing using event driven architecture and workflow orchestration
• Develop, containerize, test and maintain workflows within integrated development environments (IDEs) using AWS cloud services, Snowflake data warehouses, Python and SQL scripts, dbt, and shell scripts
• Review, redesign, and expand data models supporting data warehousing and self-service business intelligence architecture to create fully automated data pipeline(s) from staged or streamed data to organization of data warehouse objects and producing access via reporting, alerts or API access
• Design and implement data pipeline automation requiring Python scripting and SQL statements, integrating with systems such as Salesforce, Slack and AWS services using serverless, cloud servers and containerized systems
• Participate in meetings, research processes, requirement collection, data analysis, and collaborate with the key project collaborators.stakeholders of your projects
• Develop and maintain expert knowledge of CaliforniaColleges.edu data, systems, and business processes
• Continuously improve data pipelines and architecture by staying updated on industry trends and best practices
• Other duties as assigned by your supervisor

Requirements:

• The ideal candidate has extensive experience building out data ETL/ELT workloads, including the testing, maintenance, and refinement of containerized workloads in cloud architectures
• The Data Engineer should also have experience successfully scaling up an organization's data intake from batch to streaming data, as well as automating data delivery
• This person is comfortable working with data storage and can troubleshoot data accessibility via SQL, Python, shell scripting, AWS, Snowflake, and take on a leadership role in special projects when needed
• Additionally, this person should have experience developing technical documentation and implementing security governance protocols
• While there are no direct supervisory responsibilities for this position, the ideal candidate will have proactively and successfully collaborated  with other subject matter experts to move time-bound projects to completion
• Additionally, the ideal candidate will have experience working with K-12 or education data and/or have an interest in large educational systems and the equity challenges students face when navigating such systems
• You must be comfortable working with unknowns and ambiguous solutions, as well as passionate about promoting public education and advancing educational equity
• Relevant BA/BS in Computer Science, Statistics, Informatics, Information Systems, or another quantitative field
• Minimum of three (3) years of experience as a Data Engineer or a related role
• Ability to build processes supporting data transformation, data structures, metadata, dependency, and workload management
• Advanced proficiency with cloud data warehousing analytical tools such as Snowflake, Redshift,  Spark, Kafka, etc
• Expert SQL knowledge (SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc.) and understanding of relational databases, query authoring and optimization, as well as working familiarity with a variety of databases
• Advanced proficiency using ETL tools like Jupyter Notebooks, dbt, Talend, etc
• Advanced proficiency with scripting languages like Python, Scala, R,  etc
• Advanced proficiency building and optimizing data pipelines and data sets
• A successful history of manipulating, processing and extracting value from large structured and unstructured datasets
• Demonstrated ability to consistently develop strong technical documentation
• Strong data analysis and decision-making skills with the ability to take abstract brainstorming and generate concrete proposals for action
• Ability to advance projects without detailed supervision, prioritize tasks, and effectively manage multiple projects simultaneously
• Experience supporting and collaborating with cross-functional teams in a dynamic environment
• Commitment to developing and maintaining trusting professional relationships, giving and receiving direct feedback, and  modeling CCGI's values
• Ability to write with attention to accuracy, audience, and concision within task tickets in project management tools like Jira
• Excellent verbal communication skills and the ability to communicate complex information simply with both technical and non-technical audiences
• A commitment to increasing educational access and equity
• Experience working with K-12 data and/or education data is encouraged