Senior Data Engineer

The Bison Group LLC•Springfield, VA

About The Position

As a Senior Data Engineer, you will support a National Security mission to position NGA as the enterprise and community GEOINT data provider. The role focuses on improving how analysts, customers, and end users access, discover, stage, link, produce, reintegrate, and deliver intelligence. You will guide technical decisions, collaborate across mission and engineering teams, and improve cloud-based data platforms. You will lead the architecture, development, and operation of production data systems, advise on engineering approaches, and work with stakeholders to deliver reliable and secure data products. The position also involves mentoring engineers, contributing to Agile delivery, and evaluating data platform and tooling choices. Work schedule: Monday–Friday, 8 a.m.–5 p.m. A TS/SCI CI Poly clearance is required.

Requirements

Demonstrated ability to design, write, review, and support production code in Python, Scala, Java, or a comparable language, using Git, automated testing, and CI/CD practices.
Strong experience with ETL/ELT architecture, data modeling, data quality, and secure API integrations, including troubleshooting authentication and data exchange issues.
Strong engineering judgment and experience selecting data architectures and patterns for complex, evolving datasets.
Experience delivering and operating scalable production data pipelines across structured, semi-structured, or unstructured data.
Experience designing API connectors and ingestion patterns that integrate enterprise applications and external services.
Ability to own complex data engineering work from requirements and design through production operation, improving reliability and data quality.
Experience leading technical collaboration with analytics, data science, product, security, or mission teams and mentoring other engineers.
Clear written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical decisions and tradeoffs.
TS/SCI CI Poly clearance required.
Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information systems, engineering, mathematics, or a related field plus 5–8 years of relevant experience; or a related master’s degree plus at least 3 years of relevant experience.
At least 5 years of experience with a bachelor’s degree, or at least 3 years with a related master’s degree.

Nice To Haves

Knowledge of metadata standards.
Knowledge and experience with search tools, search results organization, and the implications of metadata organization, indexing, and catalog content.
Experience in GIS-related applications.

Responsibilities

Lead the architecture, design, development, and operation of scalable data pipelines and ETL/ELT processes for analytics, reporting, and mission operations.
Design and oversee API connectors and integrations that securely ingest data from internal platforms and external services.
Set engineering approaches for data processing, storage, and database performance to meet scale, reliability, and latency needs.
Establish and improve data quality, validation, monitoring, and governance practices across production data products.
Partner with mission stakeholders, analysts, architects, and product teams to define requirements and guide technical solutions.
Lead diagnosis and resolution of complex data integration, pipeline, and production performance incidents.
Coordinate with security and compliance teams to build required protections and controls into data systems.
Maintain architecture and operational documentation, and mentor engineers through design discussions and code reviews.
Contribute to Agile planning and delivery, helping the team break down work and manage technical dependencies.
Evaluate platform and tooling choices, explain tradeoffs, and recommend improvements to data architecture and engineering practices.