Senior Data Modeler – Integration & Events

ZipStaff•Washington, DC

9d•Onsite

About The Position

ZipStaff is seeking a Senior Data Modeler – Integration & Events to serve as a key technical authority across a transportation operations portfolio for a leading transportation organization. The role defines and governs conceptual, logical, and physical data models, shared semantic standards, and event/API contracts to connect legacy systems, including mainframes, with modern distributed architectures. It standardizes canonical models, manages schema lifecycles, and establishes data contracts in Kafka/Confluent environments to support reliable, interoperable, and scalable data exchange across mission-critical rail and transit operational platforms. The position is on-site in Washington, DC and is a W2 contract through ZipStaff; C2C and 1099 arrangements are not accepted.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
At least 8 years of hands-on data modeling experience designing enterprise conceptual, logical, and physical schemas for mission-critical, highly integrated transactional or operational systems.
Mastery of data modeling fundamentals, including grain definition, key strategies, normalization and denormalization trade-offs, constraints, temporal/effective dating, and state management across relational and NoSQL platforms.
Hands-on experience with Kafka and Confluent Schema Registry, including practical knowledge of subjects, schema evolution rules, compatibility modes, and reusable event contracts.
Demonstrated experience establishing governed semantic naming standards, metadata dictionaries, and enterprise data models.
Strong understanding of distributed architectures, middleware, API integration, and hybrid legacy-to-cloud migration patterns.
Excellent communication, documentation, and stakeholder facilitation skills.
Ability to work on-site in Washington, DC.

Nice To Haves

Exposure to ISO/IEC 11179-5 principles.
Mainframe experience.
Domain experience in transportation, railroad, logistics, transit, aviation, or utilities.
Experience reverse-engineering mainframe systems for modernization and data integration.
Familiarity with enterprise data governance standards such as ISO/IEC 11179-5.
Experience facilitating modeling sessions with business and technical stakeholders in complex operational environments.

Responsibilities

Design, implement, and maintain conceptual, logical, and physical data models for operational data at rest and in motion across relational, NoSQL, and event-driven systems.
Lead the definition, evolution, and governance of standardized event contracts and API schemas using Kafka Schema Registry, including compatibility modes, schema references, and consumer-impact standards.
Establish and govern canonical information models, shared operational entities, authoritative definitions, relationships, and naming conventions aligned with enterprise standards such as ISO/IEC 11179-5.
Reverse-engineer and analyze legacy operational systems, including mainframe environments, to support target-state modernization and data integration.
Partner with solution architects, application engineers, business subject-matter experts, and data integration teams to maintain traceability between business concepts, logical models, physical schemas, and event streams.
Review database and schema designs for data integrity, normalization trade-offs, history/effective-dating structures, and compliance with enterprise security and governance policies.
Facilitate modeling working sessions to translate transportation business rules into reusable, consistent technical definitions across systems.