Principal Data Engineer

D.R. Horton • Arlington, TX

3h

About The Position

D.R. Horton is seeking a Principal Data Engineer to serve as a senior technical leader in building the data foundation for the company’s evolving use of data, AI, and digital solutions. The role will define modern data engineering patterns, architect reusable data products and services, guide complex engineering decisions, and establish trusted, scalable foundations for analytics and AI. The ideal candidate is a hands-on builder who can move between architecture and implementation and translate emerging technology into durable enterprise capabilities. Success means creating reusable enterprise data products with defined contracts and quality, supported by shared engineering patterns rather than one-off pipelines.

The Principal Data Engineer will establish engineering standards and practices, build complex enterprise pipelines, lead technical design and problem-solving, and contribute to architecture decisions affecting cost, scalability, compliance, and data usability. The role also guides adoption of relevant technology, mentors engineers, and represents the data engineering function in cross-functional activities. Overnight travel is required.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• 10 or more years of data engineering, software engineering, analytics engineering, or related experience with enterprise-scale data platforms.
• Expert SQL and strong proficiency in Python or another modern programming language.
• Deep experience with cloud data platforms, dimensional and analytical modeling, layered (medallion) architectures and semantic layers, data contracts, orchestration, CI/CD, testing, performance tuning, and data quality.
• Demonstrated technical leadership through architecture, standards, mentoring, and delivery of complex production systems.
• Ability to work independently, take ownership, communicate clearly, and deliver results in an evolving environment.
• Ability to build trusted relationships across the organization while balancing enterprise standards with business needs and operating realities.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with Snowflake, dbt, Fivetran or comparable ELT tools, Airflow/Dagster or comparable orchestration, Kafka/CDC and streaming, Azure, GitHub, APIs, Iceberg and open table formats, unstructured data pipelines for AI, AI-assisted development, or comparable technologies.
• Experience in homebuilding, real estate, construction, mortgage, title, land development, sales, purchasing, finance, customer care, or another distributed operating business.
• Experience working in a large enterprise with complex enterprise environments.
• Experience founding, incubating, or building new products, capabilities, or businesses from the ground up.

Responsibilities

• Define reference patterns and engineering standards for ingestion, transformation, orchestration, testing, data products, performance, and maintainability.
• Establish data software engineering practices for Git, CI/CD, automated testing, observability, documentation, and code quality.
• Design and build complex enterprise pipelines and reusable data products across core business domains, ensuring resilience, observability, security, and enterprise-grade scale.
• Lead technical design reviews and resolve high-complexity data engineering, performance, reliability, and integration issues.
• Collaborate on architecture decisions with long-term effects on cost, scalability, regulatory compliance, and data usability.
• Evaluate and guide adoption of major technology shifts, including Fabric evolution, AI/ML data integration, and real-time pipelines.
• Mentor engineers and help transition from report-specific pipelines to governed, reusable enterprise data products.
• Represent the function in cross-functional discovery, architecture, governance, operational-readiness, and continuous-improvement activities as appropriate.
• Stay current on data, AI, digital, software, and industry practices, and apply new capabilities when they create practical business value.
• Facilitate opportunities for data, AI, and digital capabilities to create business value, with an owner's mindset and a bias toward building, testing, and learning quickly.
• Conduct all business in a professional and ethical manner.
• Travel overnight.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• 401(k).
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan.
• Flex Spending Accounts.
• Life and disability insurance.
• Vacation, sick, and personal time, and company holidays.
• Multiple voluntary and company-provided benefits.

What This Job Offers

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