Data Engineer

About Varda

Low Earth orbit is open for business. Varda is accelerating the development of commercial space infrastructure, from in‑orbit pharmaceutical processing to reliable and economical reentry capsules.
Varda’s W‑Series vehicles are built, designed, and operated in‑house, including the pharmaceutical processing payloads, the capsules, the C‑PICA heat shields, and the satellite buses.

From life‑saving pharmaceuticals to more powerful fiber optics, there is a world of products used on Earth today that can only be manufactured in space. Varda is accelerating innovation in the orbital economy by creating both the products and infrastructure needed so space can directly benefit life on Earth. Our mission is to expand the economic bounds of humankind.

Our team is uniquely suited to accomplishing this goal, with leadership and staff comprised of veterans from SpaceX, Blue Origin, major pharmaceutical companies and Silicon Valley. Varda was founded in January 2021 by Will Bruey and Delian Asparouhov with significant backing from world‑class investors including Khosla Ventures, Lux Capital, Founders Fund, Caffeinated Capital, General Catalyst, and Also Capital.

Varda is headquartered in El Segundo, California, with offices and a production facility where vehicles, equipment, and materials are built, integrated, and tested. Varda also has offices in Washington, DC and Huntsville, AL.

Varda is seeking a Data Engineer to join our team. In this role, you will support the development of data pipelines, storage, security, and quality that power the organization. You will learn and contribute to the current application ecosystem and data architecture. You will collaborate with team members across functions to identify opportunities for process or application improvements and implement solutions through the product life cycle.

This is a full‑time, onsite, exempt position located in El Segundo, California.

This role reports to the Director of Enterprise Applications.

• Build and maintain ELT pipelines that ingest data from ERP, CRM, PLM, QMS, and other enterprise systems.
• Support enterprise data platform and application evaluations by researching solutions and documenting findings.
• Assist with data storage tasks, including table format standards, partitioning strategies, and interoperability across the tool ecosystem.
• Establish data quality frameworks, lineage tracking, and pipeline observability, including SLA monitoring, proactive alerting, and production‑grade logging.
• Support AI/ML workflows by designing feature pipelines, clean data products, and a governed knowledge layer that keeps data semantically aligned for reliable model and agent consumption.
• Work with engineers and stakeholders to translate requirements and business logic into technical specifications and data solutions.
• Operate within regulated environments where pipelines must satisfy FDA GMP, ITAR, and DCAA compliance and auditability mandates.
• Implement and enforce modern development practices, including source control, peer review, CI/CD pipelines, and automated build/test/deploy workflows (e.g., Git Hub Actions).
• Leverage AI‑assisted development tooling to accelerate delivery and improve productivity.
• Learn and apply layered data architecture patterns to organize data assets for reliability and reuse.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field.
• At least 3 years of experience in enterprise integration or data engineering (advanced degrees count toward years of experience).
• Experience with cloud data warehouse or Lakehouse platforms (e.g., Snowflake, Databricks).
• Experience with relational (SQL) and non‑relational (No
  
  SQL) databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, DynamoDB).
• Exposure to data transformation tools (e.g., dbt).
• Proficiency in SQL and at least one general‑purpose programming language (e.g., Python).
• Exposure to enterprise systems such as MRP, CRM, ERP.
• Understanding of data modeling concepts (star schema, normalization, dimensional modeling).
• Familiarity with source control (Git) and CI/CD concepts.
• Ability to write clean, documented code and willingness to learn…