Data Engineer

AARP • Washington, DC

19h • Hybrid

About The Position

The Data Engineer works with cross-functional teams and customers to understand business requirements and translate them into technical specifications. The role discovers the requirements underlying feature requests, recommends alternative technical approaches, and partners with cross-functional technical teams to launch projects and provide ongoing technical support. The engineer also works with management to identify opportunities to streamline technology processes and develop procedures that support the business unit or department.

Within AARP's Data & Analytics organization, the role supports the use of data science, data engineering, predictive modeling, and market analytics to guide data-driven decisions and improve marketing and communications results.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent experience.
• At least 3 years of hands-on experience designing, building, and maintaining data pipelines and large-scale data infrastructure in a technical business environment.
• Strong proficiency in SQL and Python, including Databricks, PySpark, or similar frameworks.
• Experience with big data and distributed processing technologies such as Spark, Hadoop, and Delta Lake.
• Experience with data integration, including ETL/ELT, APIs, streaming, and batch processing; structured and unstructured datasets; and platforms such as Databricks, AWS, Informatica IICS, or similar frameworks.
• Regular and reliable job attendance.
• Effective verbal and written communication skills.
• Ability to demonstrate respect and understanding of others to maintain professional relationships.
• Independent judgment in evaluating options and making sound decisions.
• AARP will not sponsor an employment visa for this position.

Nice To Haves

• Experience implementing data quality frameworks, validation rules, reconciliation processes, automated testing, monitoring, observability, and alerting to detect and remediate pipeline failures, schema changes, and data quality anomalies.
• Knowledge of data integrity, lineage, metadata management, and data governance, including root cause analysis; familiarity with Collibra, Unity Catalog, Great Expectations, Monte Carlo, Informatica Data Quality, or similar technologies.
• Experience developing AI-powered analytics, conversational data applications, or intelligent agents using Databricks Genie, Databricks AI/BI, large language models, or similar technologies.
• Familiarity with multi-agent architecture, persona-based simulation, prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, and governed grounding.
• Experience preparing data products, semantic models, metadata, and business definitions for AI agents, and developing evaluation frameworks for accuracy, relevance, consistency, grounding, bias, and safety.

Responsibilities

• Establish technical roadmaps for platform and capability strategy and lifecycle, considering value-based outcomes, maintenance costs, supportability, and performance.
• Ensure sound integration, data, security, and business architecture design throughout all stages of a platform or capability lifecycle.
• Rapidly deliver and develop technical solutions aligned with business or platform outcomes.
• Troubleshoot and resolve technical issues related to platform or capability systems, solutions, and services.
• Drive continuous improvement of implementation methods and technical service offerings based on customer and employee experiences or enterprise objectives.
• Participate in an engineering Community of Interest across capability and platform teams to share information and strengthen understanding of business needs and technology-based solutions.
• Develop and maintain deep technical knowledge of domain systems, solutions, services, and applications.

Benefits

• 401(k)
• 100% company-funded pension plan
• Health plans
• Dental plans
• Vision plans
• Life insurance
• Paid time off, including company and individual holidays, vacation, sick, caregiving, and parental leave
• Performance-based and peer-based recognition
• Tuition reimbursement

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level