Data Engineer

Must be a U.S. Citizen with an Active TS or eligible for a Top Secret (Tier
5) clearance. No third party. No H1B or Green Card holders.

Strategic Innovation Group (SIG) is seeking a Senior Data Engineer to lead the data core of a new analytics platform for a federal government client. The platform consolidates program, financial, and performance data from multiple federal agency systems and Government-wide sources into a centralized PostgreSQL data layer that feeds dashboards, analytic rules, and reporting for oversight users, and is built on-premises within the client's FedRAMP Moderate environment.

This role owns the physical data model, the ingestion architecture, and the reusable connector framework, sets engineering standards for the data team, and is the person who can explain why the numbers on the dashboard are right. The successful candidate will be proposed as key personnel and will work in an Agile environment alongside the program manager, solutions architect, data governance lead, application developers, configuration manager, security lead, and client stakeholders to deliver a Minimum Viable Product and the foundation for its expansion.

SIG is a fast growing 8(a) government contractor based in Arlington, Virginia. We offer a broad range of technical expertise and experience in Digital Transformation, Data Management/Data Science, and Systems Modernization. At SIG, our people are our mission. Come join our team! A successful candidate will be offered the following:

• Great work/life balance
• Eligibility for performance-based participation in cash bonuses
• Potential to participate in growth of the company through incentives
• Excellent benefits, including health, dental, vision, generous PTO, a 401(k) with match, life insurance, short- and long-term disability, and a health savings account (HSA)

• Design and implement the centralized data layer in PostgreSQL to a governed schema and shared data vocabulary defined with the data governance lead.
• Architect a scalable ingestion pipeline in Python (Airflow, Dagster, Prefect, or comparable orchestration) that collects, normalizes, validates, and persists structured and unstructured data from agency financial-management, program-management, and payment systems and from Government-wide data sources.
• Build configuration-driven connectors (REST APIs, flat files, database replication, SFTP) that are reusable across agencies without source-code changes, and deploy them through the program CI/CD pipeline (Git Lab, Jenkins or Azure Dev Ops) with automated build, test, and security scanning to the client's Rancher-managed Kubernetes platform.
• Implement PII anonymization, data-handling, and access controls at ingestion in coordination with the security lead, aligned to NIST SP 800-53 Moderate controls.
• Implement defined analytic rules and threshold-based indicators as deterministic, inspectable SQL that runs on a scheduled refresh, and document the data and criteria behind each rule.
• Lead the error-detection methodology for data-quality issues: identify, categorize, track, resolve, and report defects and anomalies throughout the lifecycle.
• Capture metadata and data lineage, and expose data-currency indicators (source, last refreshed, next refresh) to the user interface.
• Set coding, code-review, testing, and documentation standards for the data team; review the Data Engineer's work; and collaborate with application developers on API access to the data core.
• Troubleshoot and resolve pipeline failures, data discrepancies, and query performance bottlenecks.
• Produce technical documentation, data dictionaries, and runbooks, and deliver knowledge transfer so client staff can operate, maintain, and extend pipelines with…