Principal Data Engineer

Principal Data Engineer

Boston, Massachusetts

Hybrid

Full Time

$180k - $200k

Job Description

Full-time, hybrid opportunity for a Principal Data Engineer based in Boston, MA (3 days/week onsite in Back Bay). This role offers the opportunity to build and scale the data infrastructure behind a leading healthcare intelligence platform, leveraging modern cloud technologies, distributed systems, and large-scale data engineering to help life sciences organizations make faster, smarter decisions.

This is a highly impactful role for an experienced data engineer who wants to own critical data infrastructure at a rapidly growing startup. You'll work on complex healthcare and regulatory datasets, build scalable pipelines, and help shape the next generation of data products used by pharmaceutical and medical device companies. The ideal candidate thrives in fast-moving environments, enjoys solving difficult technical challenges, and wants to make a meaningful impact on healthcare innovation.

Required Skills & Experience

• 5+ years of professional experience in Data Engineering or a related field

• Strong experience with data modeling, schema design, and scalable data pipelines

• Experience working with relational databases, MongoDB, and Elasticsearch

• Experience with Apache Airflow and workflow orchestration

• Experience with Infrastructure as Code tools including Docker, Terraform, Terragrunt, Helm, and Kubernetes

• Experience with Apache Spark and distributed computing frameworks

• Experience building solutions on cloud platforms

• Strong commitment to software engineering best practices and code quality

• Interest in or experience working with Generative AI technologies

Desired Skills & Experience

• Experience with Snowflake

• Knowledge of modern security practices and data governance

• Experience working with healthcare, life sciences, pharmaceutical, or medical device data

• Startup experience and comfort operating in fast-paced environments

• Experience building highly scalable and reliable data platforms

What You Will Be Doing

Tech Breakdown

• 45% Data Engineering & ETL Development

• 25% Cloud Infrastructure & Platform Engineering

• 20% Distributed Computing & Data Processing

• 10% Data Architecture & Governance

Daily Responsibilities

• 85% Hands On

• 0% Management Duties

• 15% Team Collaboration

• Design, build, and maintain scalable ETL pipelines for healthcare and regulatory datasets

• Integrate new data sources as platform capabilities continue to expand

• Optimize pipeline performance, reliability, and scalability

• Ensure data accuracy, consistency, and quality across complex workflows

• Develop and improve distributed data processing solutions using Spark

• Build and manage cloud-native infrastructure and deployment workflows

• Partner with engineering teams to evolve platform architecture and data strategy

• Implement engineering best practices around testing, monitoring, and observability

• Explore and support emerging Generative AI initiatives across the platform

• Contribute to the continued scaling of a rapidly growing data platform

The Offer

Competitive salary plus equity

You will receive the following benefits:

• Medical Insurance

• Vision Benefits

• Paid Time Off (PTO)

• Equity Participation

• Flexible Hybrid Work Environment

Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the US on a full-time basis now and in the future.

Specialization:

Data Engineering