Principal Data Engineer - Data Strategy & Architecture

Fifth Third Bank • Cincinnati, OH

4d

About The Position

The Principal Data Engineer designs and builds data platforms, tools, and solutions that enable the Bank to manage, secure, and extract value from its data. The role develops scalable, reusable solutions for collecting, storing, processing, and serving data across traditional and modern architectures, including on-premises and cloud-based environments. It also uses approved AI-assisted engineering capabilities to improve productivity, code quality, testing, documentation, and problem solving, while supporting trusted data assets for analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

This role provides technical leadership across multiple teams within a business or data domain, independently delivers complex and high-impact solutions, shapes technical strategy and standards, and influences outcomes across the broader organization. It also raises engineering capabilities through mentoring, coaching, and knowledge sharing. The position is accountable for risk management and for following policies and procedures while supporting positive outcomes for customers and colleagues.

The position is based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Supervisory responsibilities: none. The role is eligible for an incentive compensation plan in addition to base salary. Compensation varies based on factors including skills, experience, education, and location. The Bank describes its benefits programs as supporting employees’ and families’ physical, financial, emotional, and social well-being; specific benefits are available through its careers page or a talent acquisition partner.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• 8 or more years of related experience, including at least 6 years in a hands-on software development or data engineering role.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to tailor communication to technical and non-technical audiences such as business stakeholders, IT sponsors, and leadership.
• Proficiency in SQL, including query optimization, complex joins, window functions, and analytical queries across large-scale datasets.
• Significant experience with two or more relational database management systems, SQL-based data platforms, and large-scale data processing patterns.
• Experience working with and supporting Unix/Linux and Windows systems.
• Proficiency in relational database modeling concepts and techniques.
• Strong conceptual understanding of distributed computing principles and scalable data architectures.
• Strong working knowledge of application and data security concepts, best practices, and common vulnerabilities.
• Experience with REST API design and development.
• Experience with version control and CI/CD tools.
• Experience with infrastructure automation and virtualization tools.
• Experience with major cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Understanding of how trusted data supports analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning solutions.
• Understanding of data product principles and experience managing the full lifecycle of data assets.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with modern data platforms, cloud-native architectures, and data transformation technologies such as Snowflake or dbt.
• Experience with traditional data engineering tools such as IBM DB2 or IBM Information Server/DataStage.
• Experience with metadata management products and data governance tools.
• Experience with business intelligence report development and data visualization tools.
• Experience with messaging and streaming systems such as Apache Kafka.
• Experience with data warehousing and warehousing architectures.
• Experience using AI-assisted engineering capabilities.
• Experience collaborating with offshore teams.
• Financial services industry experience.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and support scalable data solutions, APIs, tools, and processes that enable rapid delivery of business capabilities across traditional and modern data platforms.
• Collaborate with IT application teams, Enterprise Architecture, infrastructure, information security, and line-of-business stakeholders to translate business and technical strategies into data-driven solutions and shape technical direction.
• Serve as a principal technical expert and trusted advisor on complex system and application design, performance, integration, security, and delivery problems.
• Research trends and technologies relevant to banking, data engineering and architecture, data security, and AI readiness, and translate relevant findings into practical improvements.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines and self-service deployment tools.
• Evaluate data and software products and document recommendations for improving capabilities.
• Lead ownership of complex, strategically important data solutions throughout design, development, testing, deployment, monitoring, operational support, modernization, and retirement; define and drive engineering standards across teams.
• Support and troubleshoot data pipelines and platforms, including participating in incident response and resolution for critical production issues.
• Lead strategic technical initiatives across teams, including legacy modernization, pipeline improvements, monitoring, and documentation; identify dependencies, risks, and delivery barriers.
• Optimize and automate data pipelines for efficiency, scalability, observability, and performance.
• Develop and maintain automated testing, validation, reconciliation, and data quality controls.
• Use approved AI-assisted engineering capabilities to improve productivity, code quality, testing, documentation, and problem solving, and support trusted data assets for analytics, AI, and machine learning.
• Manage data assets with a data product mindset, ensuring ownership, quality, discoverability, documentation, lineage, and governance throughout their lifecycle.
• Provide technical leadership, mentoring, coaching, and knowledge sharing across teams.
• Prioritize, escalate, and resolve competing technical demands and strategic dependencies across teams.
• Lead delivery of strategic, high-impact data solutions across multiple Agile teams in collaboration with product owners and stakeholders; remove cross-team barriers and balance delivery, risk, resiliency, and quality.
• Identify, assess, manage, monitor, and report risks while following Bank policies and procedures and supporting positive customer and colleague experiences.

Benefits

• Incentive compensation plan, with payment based on company, line-of-business, and/or individual performance.
• Comprehensive benefits programs designed to support employees and families’ physical, financial, emotional, and social well-being.

What This Job Offers

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