Principal Engineer Data

Principal Data Engineer With AI Experience

Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems is seeking a Principal Data Engineer with AI experience to join our onsite team in El Segundo, California.

A hybrid work arrangement may be considered for this position.

We are looking for a passionate Principal Data Engineer to design and develop an ecosystem of interconnected business systems, virtualized data pipelines, data catalogs, and end-user consumable data products. We are seeking self-motivated individuals who have a thirst for knowledge, a relentless drive to solve complex problems, and proven experience collaborating in cross functional teams.

Job Responsibilities:

• Demonstrated technical leadership (leading designs, mentoring engineers, driving cross-team technical alignment).
• Design, develop, and maintain scalable data pipelines and ETL(Extract, Transform, Load) processes across multiple data sources.
• Build and optimize data models for analytics and reporting
• Implement robust data quality, validation, and monitoring frameworks to ensure reliability of downstream insights.
• Collaborate with data scientists, product managers, and business stakeholders to translate analytical requirements into technical specifications.
• Create reusable, documented analytics code libraries to accelerate self‑service analytics.
• Evaluate emerging data technologies and recommend improvements to the analytics stack.
• Ensure compliance with data governance, security, and privacy policies.
• Develop and maintain Tableau dashboards,, and ad‑hoc querying tools for customers and stakeholders.
• Provide technical leadership through design reviews, prototyping, code contributions, and mentoring while aligning roadmaps across teams.
• Partner with product, platform, data, security, and compliance to establish responsible AI practices, model governance and predictive modeling
• Applied AI/ML engineering experience delivering models to production (classical ML and/or deep learning, including LLM-enabled solutions).
• Experience integrating AI/ML capabilities into enterprise software systems (APIs/services, data pipelines, and production deployment patterns).
• Experience working in regulated environments with strong emphasis on security, data handling, and governance expectations for AI use.

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in a Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics (STEM) field with at least 5 years of experience OR Master's Degree in a Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics (STEM) field with at least 3 years of experience OR PhD Degree in a Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics (STEM) field with at least 1 years of experience
• Experience with Python, GIT, Command Line, SQL Servers, Data Bricks, Oracle databases, Dagster, Tableau, Microsoft Excel, Visual Studio, FastAPI, Azure, SQL Alchemy, pytorch, scikit-learn, pillow, OpenCV and torch vision
• Experience with data architecture, data models, physical database designs, data integration strategy and design for operational systems, systems integration, and analytical systems
• Experience with SQL Server and proficiency in data visualization tools (e.g., Tableau, Power BI, etc.)
• Active US Government secret clearance and with the ability to obtain special program access

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with modern data orchestration tools (e.g. Airflow)
• Proficiency in leading data visualization tools (e.g. Tableau, PowerBI)
• Expert in Python, SQL, and data visualization tools.
• Experience in ERP, MRP, and Quality systems (e.g. SAP, MES, Solumina, TIPQA, etc.)
• Experience with data platform technologies (e.g., Palantir, Databricks, etc.).
• Experience leading AI technical strategy/roadmaps for a program or product; influencing stakeholders across software, systems, and program leadership.
• Deep experience with LLM solutions, including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), evaluation/guardrails, and enterprise-ready integration.
• Familiarity with enterprise AI governance and responsible-use expectations, including alignment to company AI governance procedures.

Primary Level Salary Range: $ - $The above salary range represents a general guideline; however, Northrop Grumman considers a number of factors…