Data Engineer II

If you're passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country-and you're committed to working hard to play your part in building that future-consider WGU as the next step in your career.

Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.

The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.

At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:

Grade: Technical 408 Pay Range: $118,900.00 - $178,500.00

Job Description

The Big Data Developer will design how data will flow through hybrid data environments comprised of open source big data platforms and traditional database systems. The core responsibility for this position includes design of data and systems architecture for OLAP (data warehouse/ODS) and OLTP projects encompassing dimensional and normalized data modeling.


The Big Data Developer will improve technical standards in the environment ensuring optimal use of data warehouse and other data stores to solve business problems. The Big Data Developer will serve as the go to person for query performance and data quality issues including data profiling.

Job Duties

• Develops and builds ETL/ELT data pipelines for use in data analysis.

• Creates and maintains optimal data pipeline architecture.

• Keeps data separated and secure across multiple cloud environments.

• Assembles large, complex data sets that meet functional and non-functional business requirements.

• Delivers ad-hoc and analytical reports to internal users and teams.

• Monitors and maintains ETL/ELT jobs and troubleshoots load issues.

• Manages change requests/ticket queues for analytical reports and ETL/ELT jobs.

• Performs data/technology discovery from new sources and third-party applications for data ingestion.

• Creates complex reports and dashboards in Cognos and Tableau.

• Ingests and transforms structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data from sources including relational databases, NoSQL, external APIs, JSON, XML, delimited files, and more.

• Works and delivers in agile methodology for new development projects. Delivers efficient and effective solutions on time.

• Analyzes and understands data sources and designs a data model for data capture and ETL/ELT.

• Identifies bugs, applies fixes, and checks data quality via process/pipeline audits.

• Uses industry best practices for code development, testing, implementation, and documentation.

• Performs other job-related duties as assigned.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, along with technical documentation skills

• Ability to work with team members, as well as cross-team for product delivery

• Ability to work in an agile environment with timely delivery of ETL/ELT pipelines and reports

• Knowledge and experience using tools like Jira, Confluence, and GitHub

• Ability to develop processes for the audit of data integrity

• Knowledge and experience with validation and testing development to analyze and debug issues

• Experience with relational SQL and NoSQL databases

• Knowledge and experience with object-oriented/object function scripting languages, like Python, Java, and Scala

• Knowledge and experience with big data tools, like Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, Databricks, etc.

• Exposure to analytical reporting tools, preferably Cognos and Tableau

• Knowledge and experience with Cloudera or Horton, Impala, Hive, AngularJS, HTML5, and CSS/LESS

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Management Information Systems, Computer Science, or a related field

• 4 years of experience in Data Engineering, Data Integration, Big Data, Business Intelligence, or Software Engineering

Equivalent relevant experience performing the essential functions of this job may substitute for education degree requirements. Generally, equivalent relevant experience is defined as 1 year of experience for 1 year of education and is the discretion of the hiring manager

Preferred Qualifications

• Higher Education Domain Exposure

Job Description Disclaimer: This position description provides the major duties/responsibilities, requirements and working conditions for the position. It is intended to be an accurate reflection of the current position, however management reserves the right to revise or change as necessary to meet organizational needs. Other responsibilities may be assigned when circumstances require.

This position requires occasional travel of up to 20%, including required attendance at designated company summits (typically one to two per year). Additional travel may include conferences, visits to company locations, and other business-related events as needed. Additional travel may be assigned as needed to support business requirements.

Position & Application Details

Full-Time Regular Positions (classified as regular and working 40 standard weekly hours): This is a full-time, regular position (classified for 40 standard weekly hours) that is eligible for bonuses; medical, dental, vision, telehealth and mental healthcare; health savings account and flexible spending account; basic and voluntary life insurance; disability coverage; accident, critical illness and hospital indemnity supplemental coverages; legal and identity theft coverage; retirement savings plan; wellbeing program; discounted WGU tuition; and flexible paid time off for rest and relaxation with no need for accrual, flexible paid sick time with no need for accrual, 11 paid holidays, and other paid leaves, including up to 12 weeks of parental leave.

How to Apply: If interested, an application will need to be submitted online. Internal WGU employees will need to apply through the internal job board in Workday.

Additional Information

Disclaimer: The job posting highlights the most critical responsibilities and requirements of the job. It's not all-inclusive.

Accommodations: Applicants with disabilities who require assistance or accommodation during the application or interview process should contact our Talent Acquisition team at View email address on click.appcast.io.

Equal Employment Opportunity: All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any protected characteristic as required by law.