Open Data Backend Engineer, (Senior Consultant, Engineering & Technical Services)

Fearless•Baltimore, MD

1d•$120,588 - $159,000•Remote

About The Position

At Fearless, the Senior Consultant, Engineering & Technical Services, serves as a technical leader within cross-functional Agile teams, driving the design, architecture, and maintenance of modern, high-impact digital experiences for a federal health care platform that serves approximately 11 million monthly users. This role advances CMS's open data sites and the federal open data ecosystem, building and extending DKAN-based data portals on Drupal 11, with a focus on performance, security, and scalability. As a senior practitioner, the successful candidate coaches and mentors peers, leads stakeholder alignment, owns delivery risk, and translates complex requirements into resilient solutions—tackling significant problems that affect millions of users. This position is remote and requires a federal Public Trust clearance, a federal background investigation, and U.S. residence for at least 3 of the last 5 years to satisfy all CMS residency requirements. This role will possess the skills to be able to bridge business objectives with technical execution in software development, infrastructure, security, and testing at an advanced application level of proficiency. The Sr. Consultant role will work on projects that allow them to ensure scalable, secure, and reliable solutions while mentoring engineers, fostering collaboration, and aligning stakeholders with product and project goals.

Requirements

7+ years of engineering experience
Bachelor's degree or 4 years of additional experience
Deep experience with Drupal 10–11 core and contributed APIs (Entity, Form, Plugin, Configuration, etc.) and custom module development
Firm grasp of object-oriented principles in PHP and software engineering best practices
Comfortable reading external API documentation and integrating RESTful or GraphQL services
Familiarity with open-data standards, publishing workflows, or platforms (e.g., DKAN, CKAN, Socrata, data.gov, DCAT, FHIR)
Ability to craft optimized SQL as well as Drupal EntityQuery/Database-API calls
Experience with command-line tools, including Drush and common Unix utilities
Ability to develop unit and/or behavioral tests using automated testing tools (e.g., Cypress, PHPUnit) and efficient debugging practices (e.g., Xdebug)
Strong understanding of Git workflows and CI/CD pipelines
Drupal.org username required
U.S. residency for at least 3 of the last 5 years and ability to pass a federal background check
Ability to obtain and maintain Public Trust clearance

Nice To Haves

Demonstrated hands-on experience with the DKAN distribution (dataset creation, harvesting, catalog search, custom module development)
Experience with large-scale data ingestion, ETL pipelines, or data normalization
Knowledge of healthcare data formats or interoperability standards (e.g., HL7 FHIR, C-CDA)
Strong understanding of caching systems (Drupal, Varnish, Akamai CDN)
Familiarity with accessibility (Section 508 / WCAG) and performance optimization for query-heavy public websites

Responsibilities

Design, build, and maintain Drupal 11 backend features and custom modules with a focus on performance, security, and scalability
Extend, customize, and upgrade DKAN-based data portals, including dataset schemas, harvesting jobs, and metadata workflows
Architect and integrate APIs that expose CMS healthcare data to the public
Manage configuration-as-code using the Drupal Configuration API
Develop code collaboratively in Git (forks, branching, pull requests, conflict resolution) and take part in peer programming and code reviews
Set up and maintain local Drupal sandbox environments using Docker-based tools (e.g., DDEV, docker-compose)
Write unit, integration, and behavioral tests (PHPUnit, Cypress) to validate features
Draft and maintain user-story acceptance criteria, implementation notes, and risk/assumptions
Coach and mentor peers on backend best practices, security awareness, and Drupal architecture patterns
Participate fully in Agile ceremonies, project meetings, and internal knowledge-sharing sessions