Principal Data Engineer #1052690

Jackson, Michigan Principal Data Engineer #1052690

If you're looking for a career that will provide a challenging work environment and many opportunities to learn, our company is the place for you. Join our team and become part of a company full of exciting opportunities. We help employees achieve their personal best by offering many opportunities that develop and enhance their skills for career advancement.

General Summary of Responsibilities:

• The Applications and Analytics team is the heart of innovation, powering Michigan's future by crafting cutting edge digital solutions that transform our customers and communities experience energy.
• Guided by our digital first strategy, we harness modern technical practices and agile methodologies to ensure data and insights are accessible, reliable and actionable, enabling evidence - based decision making, operational efficiency and innovation across the organization. Join a dynamic team where collaboration, creativity and impact converge.
• We partner closely with business teams to uncover digital opportunities, prioritize high impact outcomes and deliver trustworthy, user-friendly technology. B
• y embracing our CE way principles- engaging on solutions, illuminating priorities and minimizing waste - we build systems that are simple, helpful and valuable.
• If you're passionate about innovation, community and shaping a sustainable energy future, come grow with us at company.
• The Principal Data Engineer is responsible for partnering with diverse analytics teams and business stakeholders across the enterprise design, develop and maintain data pipelines and architecture aligned with established IT best practices.
• Key responsibilities include developing data warehouses, designing, extracting, loading and testing data solutions performing data modeling, ensuring application stability assembling and cleansing large datasets creating and optimizing ETL processes; and identifying opportunities to automate manual data processes.
• This role also leads and provides guidance to lower-level Data Engineers, establishing team standards, frameworks, and best practices while ensuring adherence to data engineering principles across analytics teams.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Assemble and cleanse large datasets from various sources to support business requirements for enhancements of varying complexity.
• Capture and evaluate requirements from data architects and business partners, assess development alternatives, and establish clear delivery timelines.
• Create data visualizations to support customer insights, operational efficiency, and other key business performance metrics using a variety of reporting tools.
• Identify opportunities to improve internal processes by automating manual data wrangling, optimizing performance, and enhancing data quality.
• Prepare documentation and artifacts to support solution delivery and project activities.
• Provide day-to-day guidance and mentorship to lower-level Data Engineers to support talent development within the department.
• Deliver incident management and technical consulting for current applications and solutions.
• Provide technical direction for enhancements of varying scope, including solution alternatives, design, testing, and documentation.
• Collaborate with stakeholders and IT partners to design and build efficient data pipelines supporting business and technical requirements.

Knowledge/Skills/Abilities:

• Ability to work effectively with contract employees and external vendors.
• Knowledge of change and release management tools and processes used to implement solutions across multiple teams and technologies.
• Strong understanding of data design principles and systems engineering concepts, including structured design, supportability, scalability, reliability, survivability, and maintainability.
• Knowledge of project planning and full lifecycle delivery using Agile methodologies.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to work effectively at all levels of the organization.
• Strong ability to establish and maintain effective working relationships across business and IT teams.
• Understanding of data testing methodologies and associated tools.
• Knowledge of database management principles, including data structures, data modeling, data warehousing, and transaction processing.

Education/Experience:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science or a related field, plus seven(7) or more years of software engineering and intermediate level data engineering experience including advanced analytics tool development, data architecture/design, requirements definition, big data pipeline development, ETL processes, data testing fundamentals, and analytic tool deployment best practices.
  • [OR] Associate's degree in a related field, plus nine (9) or more years of relevant experience
  • [OR] High School Diploma, plus eleven (11) or more years of relevant experience

Preferred Experience:

Candidates with one or more of the following skills will stand out:

• Ownership of enterprise-level lakehouse architecture, including defining reference architectures, patterns, and guardrails for Databricks platforms at scale.
• Recognized expertise in Databricks platform strategy, including governance, workspace/domain strategy, standardization, and team enablement.
• Mastery of analytics data modeling standards, including fact/dimension strategies, conformed dimensions, SCD patterns, bridges, and metric governance.
• Proven ability to create and enforce engineering standards (e.g., dbt conventions, testing frameworks, documentation standards, code review practices).
• Expert-level proficiency in Spark and distributed compute optimization, including guiding teams on design tradeoffs and performance best practices.
• Strong experience designing secure, discoverable, self-service data products using catalog, lineage, and access governance principles.
• Ability to shape cross-team roadmaps and influence leaders through architecture reviews, decision records, and executive-level recommendations.
• Demonstrated leadership in platform reliability and operational excellence, including observability standards, incident response frameworks, resilience practices, and cost optimization.
• Experience enabling modern analytics and machine learning practices, including feature-ready datasets, MLflow/MLOps alignment, and experimentation/production workflows.
• Recognized ability to mentor and coach technical talent, elevate engineering practices, and scale best practices across an organization.

Additional Info:

At FastTek Global, Our Purpose is Our People and Our Planet . We come to work each day and are reminded we are helping people find their success stories. Also, Doing the right thing is our mantra. We act responsibly, give back to the communities we serve and have a little fun along the way.

We have been doing this with pride, dedication and plain, old-fashionedhard work for 24 years !

FastTek Global is financially strong, privately held company that is 100% consultant and client focused .

We've differentiated ourselves by being fast, flexible, creative and honest . Throw out everything you've heard, seen, or felt about every other IT Consulting company. We do unique things and we do them for Fortune 10, Fortune 500, and technology start-up companies.

Our benefits are second to none and thanks to our flexible benefit options you can choose the benefits you need or want, options include:

• Medical and Dental (FastTek pays majority of the medical program)
• Vision
• Personal Time Off (PTO) Program
• Long Term Disability (100% paid)
• Life Insurance (100% paid)
• 401(k) with immediate vesting and 3% (of salary) dollar-for-dollar match

Plus, we have a lucrative employee referral program and an employee recognition culture.

FastTek Global was named one of the Top Work Places in Michigan by the Detroit Free Press in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023!

AI & Hiring Disclosure

We use AI tools to support parts of our hiring process, such as reviewing applications and identifying potential matches. These tools are designed to promote efficiency, consistency, and fairness, and they are always used under human oversight.

All personal data collected is used solely for recruitment purposes, and you have the right to know, access, or request deletion of your data at any time, subject to legal limits.

If AI will be used in a video interview, you'll be informed in advance and asked for your consent, with the option to opt out.

Our tools are regularly reviewed to detect potential bias and to ensure compliance with all applicable laws and our commitment to inclusive hiring.

To learn more or exercise your rights, please contact us at View email address on click.appcast.io.