Principal Data Platform Engineer

Principal Data Platform Engineer

This is a remote role, hours are 8am-5pm, local time, Mon-Fri. This role is the founding owner of a greenfield data and AI platform supporting federal background investigation work. You will design and build the data platform from scratch — owning the architecture end to end, partnering with cloud engineering across the infrastructure boundary, and laying the foundation a growing data science and machine learning team will rely on to deliver state-of-the-art ML and AI capabilities to customers. This is a hands-on role in a high-trust environment where FedRAMP Moderate, NIST 800-171, and CUI handling are first-class design constraints, not afterthoughts. It's also high-ownership work: a modern platform built deliberately on real mission problems. Active clearance preferred- if not, candidates will need to obtain a TS clearance/SSBI within the first few months of the assignment.

Responsibilities:

• Design and stand up the organization's data and AI platform from the ground up — architecture, compute, storage, and the lakehouse foundation.
• Codify the platform as infrastructure-as-code (Terraform) and build the CI/CD pipelines that promote work from development through to the accredited production environment.
• Establish data governance, cataloging, lineage, and fine-grained access control as foundational, not bolted on later.
• Build and own the ingestion, transformation, and pipeline layer that turns raw and synthetic data into governed, analysis-ready data products.
• Design the platform to operate within FedRAMP Moderate, NIST 800-171, and CUI constraints, treating compliance as a first-class architectural requirement.
• Define the artifact promotion process so only signed, validated artifacts cross into the accredited environment.
• Partner with cloud engineering across the infrastructure/security boundary, with clear ownership of the in-platform layer.
• Enable the data science and ML team with the platform capabilities, governed data, and tooling they need to ship models and AI features into the product.
• Own platform reliability, performance, and cost discipline as usage scales.
• Set the engineering standards, patterns, and documentation a growing data team will build on.

Required Qualifications:

• U.S. citizenship required. Must be able to obtain and maintain a T5/SSBI federally adjudicated clearance; active clearance preferred.
• [8]+ years in data engineering / data platform engineering, with demonstrated principal-level ownership.
• Has stood up a data platform or lakehouse from scratch — owning the architecture and build end to end, not operating an inherited one.
• Design of batch (and, where needed, streaming) data pipelines and SQL-based transformations on a lakehouse/Delta foundation, with sound analytical data modeling.
• Infrastructure-as-code (Terraform) and CI/CD for data workloads, including environment promotion from development to production.
• Platform-level data governance: cataloging, lineage, and fine-grained access control.
• Hands-on cloud experience with a major provider (Azure preferred; AWS or GCP considered).
• Strong proficiency in Python and SQL.
• Track record partnering across an infrastructure/security boundary and setting technical standards for other engineers.
• Excellent analytical, troubleshooting, and communication skills.
• Bachelor's in a technical field or equivalent experience.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Hands-on Databricks: Unity Catalog, Databricks Asset Bundles, MLflow.
• Experience in regulated or accredited environments: FedRAMP, NIST 800-171, CMMC, CUI handling, or the ATO/RMF process.
• Active security clearance (T5/SSBI or higher).
• Government or defense contracting experience.
• Familiarity with MLOps patterns (model registry, model serving) to support a data science team.
• Cost governance / FinOps discipline for cloud data platforms.
• Spark / PySpark — relevant since the platform is Databricks, though the data volume here does not demand distributed-scale expertise.

Soft Skills:

• Ability to translate business needs into performant, well-architected data solutions.
• Strong collaboration across technical and non-technical teams.
• Clear documentation and communication in fast-paced environments.

Education/Experience:

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering or relevant field required.
• 8-10 years experience required. Clearance: Top Secret Required