Lead AWS Data Engineer

Contract Opportunity with a Major Investment Firm

Location: Newark, NJ (Hybrid - 3 Days/Week Onsite)

Duration: Long-Term Contract

Pay Rate: Open

Employment Type: W2 or Corp-to-Corp

Candidates: Local Candidates Preferred

We are seeking an experienced Lead AWS Data Engineer to join a growing Data Engineering team within a leading investment management organization. This is a hands‑on technical leadership role responsible for designing and delivering enterprise‑scale AWS data solutions while mentoring engineers and driving cloud engineering best practices.

The ideal candidate will have extensive experience building modern data platforms on AWS, leading engineering teams, and delivering scalable, high‑performance data solutions that support enterprise analytics and business initiatives.

• Lead the design, development, and optimization of enterprise‑scale data pipelines and cloud data architectures
• Architect end‑to‑end AWS data solutions, including data ingestion, storage, transformation, and analytics
• Design and implement scalable data lakes and cloud data warehouse solutions
• Lead the migration of legacy data platforms to AWS‑based environments
• Mentor, coach, and provide technical leadership to a team of Data Engineers
• Conduct code reviews and establish engineering best practices
• Collaborate with Data Scientists, Business Analysts, Product Owners, and business stakeholders to translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions
• Develop and maintain robust ETL/ELT processes and enterprise data pipelines
• Establish standards for data quality, governance, security, and compliance
• Drive adoption of Dev Ops, CI/CD pipelines, and Infrastructure‑as‑Code practices
• Optimize cloud solutions for scalability, reliability, security, and cost efficiency
• Research emerging AWS technologies and evaluate new tools and frameworks
• Troubleshoot complex production issues and provide technical leadership during resolution

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field
• 7+ years of experience in Data Engineering
• At least 3 years of experience serving as a Lead Data Engineer or Technical Lead
• Strong programming experience with Python and SQL
• Experience with Shell scripting (Scala experience is a plus)
• Strong experience designing and implementing enterprise data lakes, data warehouses, and cloud‑based data platforms
• Experience building scalable ETL/ELT pipelines and modern data ingestion frameworks
• Strong understanding of data modeling and big data technologies
• Experience mentoring engineers and leading technical initiatives
• Experience implementing CI/CD pipelines and Dev Ops best practices
• Hands‑on experience with Infrastructure‑as‑Code tools such as Cloud Formation and Terraform
• Excellent communication, leadership, analytical, and problem‑solving skills

• AWS Solutions Architect or AWS Data Engineer Certification
• Experience with real‑time streaming technologies such as Amazon Kinesis or Kafka
• Knowledge of enterprise data governance, compliance, and cloud security best practices
• Experience with Lakehouse architecture and modern cloud data platforms
• Experience working within large enterprise or financial services environments

If you're a hands‑on AWS Data Engineering leader looking to architect enterprise‑scale cloud data platforms while mentoring engineering teams, we'd love to hear from you.