Staff Data Platform Engineer

Umbra • Santa Barbara, CA

16h • $185,000 - $220,000 • Onsite

About The Position

Umbra is seeking a Senior/Staff Data Platform Engineer to lead our data infrastructure architecture. The individual filling this position will collaborate with product owners and multidisciplinary engineering teams to design, develop, and maintain the data systems that support our autonomous satellite operations, analytics, and internal decision-making. They will play a key role in Umbra's efforts toward redefining how space radar data is consumed. This position is based on-site in either our Santa Barbara/Goleta, CA office, Arlington, VA office, or Reston, VA office (coming soon).

Requirements

• Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Data Science, or equivalent experience.
• 15+ years of professional experience as a Data Engineer or similar roles.
• Strong proficiency in SQL and experience with data warehousing, lakehouse architecture, and analytics engineering concepts.
• Proficiency in data pipeline development using Python and SQL, utilizing version control and CI/CD best practices.
• Proficiency with analytics and visualization tools such as Omni Analytics, Tableau, Power BI, or similar.
• Experience with Databricks, Apache Hadoop Ecosystem (HDFS, Spark, HBase, etc), or similar large-scale data processing and lakehouse platforms.
• Experience with dbt or similar data transformation and modeling frameworks.
• Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure for building reliable data storage and processing.
• Familiarity with monitoring and observability solutions such as Datadog, Grafana, Prometheus, New Relic, Splunk, or similar.
• Effective communication skills, ability to work collaboratively in a team environment, and willingness to learn new skills and technology.

Nice To Haves

• Experience working in the aerospace industry.
• Experience with mission scheduling software and/or schedule optimization.
• Experience developing SAR image processing/formation applications.
• Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code, DevOps, Identity and Access Management, and Developer Platforms.
• Experience building custom GIS applications, STAC, or other imagery catalog APIs.
• Experience with semantic layers, data catalogs, lineage, or data quality tooling.
• Current security clearance or willingness and ability to acquire one.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain scalable data pipelines and infrastructure to process, model, and analyze large volumes of satellite, operations, and business data
• Develop and optimize data models, data warehouses, lakehouse patterns, and dbt transformations to support internal analytics, machine learning applications, and operational decision-making
• Build and operate analytics and data platform capabilities using tools such as Databricks, dbt, Omni Analytics, and related cloud services
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to understand data requirements and ensure data quality, reliability, performance, and usability
• Implement best practices for data governance, reliability, security, compliance, lineage, cost management, and observability

Benefits

• Flexible Time Off, Sick, Family & Medical Leave
• Medical, Dental, Vision, Life, LTD, STD (employer funded)
• Vol Life, Critical Illness, Accidental, Hospital Indemnity, Pet Insurance (employee funded)
• 401k with 3% non-elective company contribution
• Stock Options
• Free parking
• Free lunch in office daily

What This Job Offers

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