Principal Data Engineer

Applied Systems, Inc. • ,

6d • $160,000 - $260,000

About The Position

Applied Systems is seeking a Principal Data Engineer to shape the architectural foundation of its Data and Analytics capabilities as the company scales, improves insights, and lays the groundwork for enterprise AI. The role combines deep data architecture expertise with hands-on engineering, technical leadership, and a commitment to enabling engineering teams.

The Principal Data Engineer will define long-term, AI-enabled data architecture and help teams use AI and automation to increase their impact. This includes designing and governing agentic workflows with appropriate guardrails, establishing scalable data and engineering standards, and surfacing system-level insights that improve quality and velocity. The position is a player-coach role, involving architectural decisions, hands-on implementation and validation, mentorship, and cross-functional influence.

Applied describes its culture as people-first, built on trust, inclusion, and growth. The role is listed with hybrid and remote location tags. The anticipated U.S. base salary range is $160,000–$260,000; eligible employees may also participate in incentive compensation programs and receive a comprehensive benefits package.

Requirements

• 15+ years in software/data engineering or architecture with outstanding impact.
• Degree in Computer Science, a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Expert knowledge of data architecture principles and best practices.
• Hands-on builder experience, actively coding, testing, and validating architecture at scale.
• Proven ability to influence without authority.
• Pragmatic approach and focus on eliminating waste.
• Player-coach mindset and commitment to teaching through action.
• Adaptability, resilience, and ability to thrive in ambiguity with iteration.
• Excellent communication skills, including explaining complex problems clearly to different audiences.
• Expertise across data and software technologies.
• Proven experience architecting large-scale data warehouses or lakehouses.
• Solid understanding of data modeling concepts, including dimensional modeling and streaming architectures.
• Strong understanding of data governance.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with GCP BigQuery and dbt.
• Experience with vector stores.
• Experience implementing data catalogs.

Responsibilities

• Define large-scale data architecture decisions for batch and streaming platforms, warehouses, and lakehouses, evaluating quality, scalability, and long-term sustainability tradeoffs.
• Architect observability, alerting, and incident-response frameworks to monitor data pipeline health and SLAs; serve as the technical escalation point for complex data architecture problems.
• Partner with Applied teams to define standards for data quality, lineage tracking, access control, cataloging, and governance, and establish SLAs/SLOs for critical data assets.
• Design data modeling standards for OLAP/warehouse, OLTP/transactional, streaming/real-time, and AI/vector/feature-store use cases.
• Define patterns for embedding AI and agent-supported workflows into the data engineering lifecycle and enable adoption at scale.
• Define and enforce data engineering standards, best practices, and design patterns across the organization.
• Mentor and grow engineers through code reviews, design discussions, and technical guidance.
• Influence cross-functional roadmaps by translating business requirements into data architecture strategies.
• Design and govern agentic workflows with appropriate guardrails and define the long-term vision for AI-enabled data architecture.
• Build, test, and validate architecture hands-on at scale.

Benefits

• Medical coverage
• Dental coverage
• Vision coverage
• Holiday and vacation time
• Health and Wellness Days
• A bonus day for your birthday
• Eligible employees may participate in incentive compensation programs, such as annual bonuses or commissions
• Comprehensive benefits package

What This Job Offers

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