Senior FDE Data Engineer

EMPLOYER IS A CONTRACTOR FOR THE U.S. GOVERNMENT. THIS POSITION WILL REQUIRE U.S. CITIZENSHIP. Role Description This is a forward‑deployed engineering role. You'll work shoulder‑to‑shoulder with mission heroes: the users, operators, and program engineers who run real workloads in real DoD environments. You will make UDS Data Capability “deployable” and “running in production under classification.” You will deploy, harden, integrate, and operate our data stack in the mission hero’s environment, then bring what you learn back into the product to make future engagements easier. The scope of work varies by engagement. Some programs require a governed data platform to centralize sensor or operational data from known sources, where the problem is well‑defined and the priority is building and shipping. Others involve consolidating data across hundreds of interconnected government systems of record with overlapping schemas and deep interdependence, requiring navigation of complex architectures. You should be comfortable executing against a defined data problem and navigating ambiguity where the right approach is not yet clear. Forward‑deployed means you are aligned with the mission hero and may be on site or remote. Basis of work is largely remote, but you will travel to sites for initial stand‑up, integration, incident response, training and knowledge transfer. The role is defined by the relationship with the mission hero, not by location. You are a data engineer who can own the full breadth of a data platform (storage, ingestion, streaming, governance, and access) and deliver working solutions in constrained, mission‑critical environments. About 20 % of your time is spent investing in the forward‑deployed team: pairing with junior Data Engineer FDEs on hard problems and helping them develop technical judgment gained from field experience. Responsibilities Deploy and harden UDS Data Capability in the mission hero’s environment. Stand up the UDS Store (Iceberg, Rook/Ceph, pgvector, Postgres), wire up UDS Transit for air‑gap data movement, configure UDS Govern policies (Pepr/Lula), and integrate UDS Connect (Strimzi/Kafka) when streaming or legacy connectors are required. Own the integration with existing mission systems. Connect UDS Data Capability to legacy databases, flat‑file drops, SOAP/REST endpoints, message buses, existing object storage, and identity providers (Keycloak, mission‑side SSO). Prior experience integrating with these systems is more relevant than experience building on them. Map and navigate complex data landscapes. Trace how data moves across systems, identify dependencies, and advise government stakeholders on consolidation and architectural decisions. Build pipelines that move data through classification boundaries – ingestion, transformation, catalog registration, model/dataset packaging via Zarf, cross‑domain transit, and eventual consistency across DDIL conditions. Establish data provenance, lineage, and governance practices. Track data origin, transformation, and access. Operate what you deploy. Provide day‑2 ownership including capacity, performance, backup/restore (Velero), observability (Vector/Loki), incident response, and upgrade paths; hand off to the mission hero’s ops team when stable. Generate accreditation artifacts – STIG evidence, cATO documentation, FIPS validation notes, policy mappings – to satisfy the mission hero’s ISSM/ISSO for IL4/IL5 operation. Advocate for the mission hero back to product and engineering. File issues, write post‑mortems, propose operator improvements, and ensure field experience informs platform development. Train and transfer. Deliver runbooks, architecture docs, working sessions, and knowledge transfer so the mission hero’s team is self‑sufficient. Grow junior Data Engineer FDEs. Pair on hard problems, review integration designs before they reach the customer, and accelerate technical development across the team. This is a mentorship role, not a management one. Preferred Locations Colorado Springs, CO or Florida Space Coast (Cape Canaveral / Cocoa Beach / Melbourne). Remote candidates are considered, but local presence is strongly preferred. Travel Expectations Candidates based in Colorado Springs or the Florida Space Coast can expect on‑site presence 1‑2 days per week. Remote candidates should expect to travel to the engagement site for approximately one week every 4–6 weeks. Required Qualifications Unstructured data at scale – production experience storing and querying large unstructured datasets using data lake architectures. Spark strongly preferred. Streaming & integration – building and operating stream processing infrastructure (Kafka, Redpanda, Flink, or equivalent) and bridging data from heterogeneous sources into modern pipelines. Data warehousing – open‑source data warehousing platform experience. Comfortable building without proprietary platforms. Pipelines & orchestration – Airflow, Dagster, Argo Workflows, or similar. Comfort building, scheduling, monitoring, and recovering production data pipelines. Data modeling & SQL – fluent in SQL. Comfortable designing schemas for both analytical and operational workloads. Preferred Qualifications Data provenance, lineage, and governance experience. Depth here will be weighted heavily. Lakehouse & storage – Apache Iceberg (or Delta/Hudi), object storage (Ceph/S3‑compatible), Postgres (including extensions like pgvector), columnar/OLAP engines (Trino, DuckDB, ClickHouse, Spark SQL). Change Data Capture – Debezium or similar CDC patterns. Governance, catalog & access – REST catalogs (Iceberg REST, Polaris/Gravitino/Nessie family), ABAC/RBAC patterns, OIDC/OAuth, lineage and audit. Kubernetes awareness – general familiarity with deployments, operators, and how applications run on Kubernetes. IaC (Terraform, Pulumi, or similar) and GitOps patterns (Flux, ArgoCD). Familiarity with the CNCF ecosystem, including the distinction between foundation projects and single‑vendor projects. AI/ML awareness – general understanding of how data infrastructure supports model training, versioning, provenance, and AI operations. Familiarity with Air Force or Space Force systems of record (e.g., MILPDS, ARMS) and how data flows between them. Benefits Health: Premiums are 100 % company paid; Health Savings Account; Life Insurance; Disability Insurance; 401(k) Retirement Plan; Company Stock Options; Home Office Budget. Leave: Flexible Time Off (FTO) plus all federal holidays, one week for Thanksgiving, and two weeks for Christmas and New Year’s. Learning: Reimbursement for approved trainings/subscriptions; conferences (travel, lodging, and fees). Other: Compensation ranges $148,750 – $201,250 USD; remote‑eligible within the United States. EEO & Diversity Commitment Defense Unicorns is an equal‑opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, national origin, veteran status, genetic information, union status and/or beliefs, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. We encourage under‑represented groups to apply even if they do not meet every qualification. #J-18808-Ljbffr