Principal Data Engineer

Cargill • Geneva, IL

3d

About The Position

The Advisor, Data Engineering owns the Trading and Risk Management (TRM) data strategy and drives its execution. The role translates trading ambitions into a prioritized roadmap of trusted, governed, reusable data products and defines the information architecture needed for AI-enabled trading. It combines strategic leadership with hands-on technical guidance, partnering across the organization to turn fragmented demand into measurable business outcomes.

The role defines TRM’s data strategy, target state, priorities, value cases, investment choices, and execution backlog. It evolves critical datasets into governed, high-quality data products; establishes ownership, stewardship, quality standards, and lifecycle management; and stewards the TRM information architecture, including data products, domain and semantic models, metadata, lineage, and AI-ready foundations. It partners with data, architecture, security, and governance teams to adopt common standards while defining governed exceptions where needed.

As the technical authority for TRM data engineering, the position reviews platform, pipeline, modeling, and integration designs; guides engineers through complex trade-offs; and ensures solutions are scalable, observable, resilient, secure, maintainable, and suitable for analytics and AI workloads. The role also builds trusted relationships with trading, risk, operations, and technology leaders, communicates technical choices to executive and technical audiences, and develops and coaches data resources across teams.

Requirements

• At least 8 years of relevant work experience.
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, information systems, data management, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Deep, hands-on engineering credibility on a modern cloud data stack in complex, mission-critical environments.
• Experience with data pipelines, distributed processing, data modeling, lineage, data quality, orchestration, and production systems.
• Strong command of cloud-native and event-driven architectures, batch and streaming patterns, APIs, and data contracts.
• Ability to make deliberate platform and cost trade-offs.
• Demonstrated understanding of front-to-back trading and risk-management processes, decision workflows, and data needs.
• Ability to translate business strategy into data capabilities, target-state architecture, roadmaps, investment priorities, and measurable value.
• Strong communication, influencing, and negotiation skills across business, engineering, architecture, and governance stakeholders.
• Ability to mobilize capabilities across multiple teams, bring clarity to ambiguity, challenge constructively, and balance speed to market with enterprise standards and sustainable design.

Nice To Haves

• Typically 10 or more years of progressive experience spanning data strategy, information architecture, data products, governance, and execution.
• Leadership experience in a complex trading, commodities, financial-markets, or risk-management environment.
• Familiarity with agent-oriented data access patterns and the balance between broad cross-domain access and least-privilege controls.
• Experience in commodities or another asset-intensive trading environment.
• An advanced degree.

Responsibilities

• Define the TRM data strategy, target state, priorities, value cases, investment choices, roadmap, and execution backlog.
• Translate trading and risk-management ambitions into sequenced data initiatives with measurable outcomes.
• Lead or partner with data teams to evolve critical datasets into governed, high-quality, reusable data products for analytics, AI, and trading.
• Establish clear data ownership, stewardship, quality standards, and lifecycle management.
• Shape and steward the TRM information architecture, including data products, domain and semantic models, metadata, lineage, and AI-ready foundations.
• Ensure architecture decisions support discoverability, reuse, interoperability, and trusted decision-making.
• Partner with data functions, architecture, security, and governance teams to adopt common standards and operating models, and define governed exceptions when needed.
• Serve as the technical authority for TRM data engineering by reviewing and challenging platform, pipeline, modeling, and integration designs.
• Guide engineers through complex technical trade-offs and ensure solutions are scalable, observable, resilient, secure, maintainable, and ready for analytics and AI workloads.
• Provide leadership and guidance to product teams to address high-value needs and execute the TRM data strategy.
• Convert fragmented or ad hoc requests into a transparent, prioritized backlog with clear delivery metrics and business outcomes.
• Build trusted relationships with trading, risk, operations, and technology leaders to understand decision workflows, identify data constraints, and shape solutions.
• Communicate complex data and architecture choices clearly to executive and technical audiences.
• Develop and coach high-performing data resources across teams.
• Clarify roles and ways of working across data strategy, architecture, engineering, product ownership, and stewardship, and strengthen data-product and AI-readiness capabilities across TRM.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and benefits.
• Career development opportunities.
• Inclusive and accessible recruitment process and workplace, with accommodations available during recruitment or interviews.

What This Job Offers

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