Principal Data Engineer

** Become a part of our caring community*
* The Principal Data Engineer owns the design and delivery of the NBA platform's data pipelines on the Databricks Lakehouse. This is a hands-on engineering role first - you are expected to be a significant individual contributor building production pipelines every sprint. You also lead a small team of data engineers and contractors, and are accountable for the quality, reliability, and timeliness of the data that feeds the platform's AI models and decisioning system.

** What You'll Own*
* + Pipeline delivery - design, build, and own the Bronze/Silver/Gold lakehouse pipelines that power the NBA platform: member profiles, clinical signals, behavioral data, web clickstream, and socioeconomic features

+ Hands-on development - actively write and ship production SQL, Python, and Spark code alongside your team; this is not a supervisory role

+ Data modeling - own the Gold layer schema that serves as the canonical member feature set for model training and batch scoring; make design decisions that balance flexibility, performance, and governance

+ Data quality - build and maintain data quality checks, null/sparsity monitoring, and pipeline alerting so the team knows before anyone else when something is wrong

+ External data integration - onboard new data sources (clinical feeds, government datasets, third-party signals) from raw ingestion through production-ready features

+ Contractor management - manage data engineering contractors within your pod; set expectations, review work, and hold the team to quality standards

+ Cross-functional partnership - work closely with the Principal Decision Intelligence Engineer on feature requirements, and with software engineering pods on how data flows into the decisioning system

** What You'll Need*
* +  _Sponsorship is not available for this role_

+ Bachelor's degree in computer science or relevant field

+ 10+ years of data engineering experience with at least 1-2 years in a tech lead or senior lead capacity

+ Deep hands-on experience with Databricks and Delta Lake - you have built and owned production pipelines, not just contributed to them

+ Strong SQL and Python skills; comfortable with Spark at scale

+ Experience designing and owning a medallion lakehouse architecture (Bronze/Silver/Gold or equivalent)

+ Proven ability to lead a small team or pod through delivery and manage contractor resources

+ Strong data quality instincts - you treat bad data as a production incident

+ Clear communicator - you can explain a pipeline design decision to a data scientist, a product owner, and a compliance officer

+ Comfort using AI productivity tools (Claude, Copilot, or similar) to accelerate development and analysis

** Strong plus:*
* + Masters degree

+

Experience with Databricks Delta Live Tables, Unity Catalog, and Feature Store

+ Familiarity with Kafka-based event pipelines and real-time data ingestion

+ Background in healthcare, insurance, or other regulated industries with PHI/HIPAA data handling requirements

+ Experience integrating government or third-party datasets (CMS, CDC, STARS, or similar)

** Use your skills to make an impact*
* ** Work Style:
** Remote/Hybrid - Preferably Boston, MA.

Occasional travel to Humana's offices for training or meetings may be required.

** Work Hours** :
Typical business hours are Monday-Friday, 8 hours/day, 5 days/week-- some flexibility might be possible, depending on business needs.

Very minimal travel might be required for training, meetings, and/or conferences

** Work at Home Requirements*
* WAH requirements:
Must have the ability to provide a high-speed DSL or cable modem for a home office. Associates or contractors who live and work from home in the state of California will be provided with payment for their internet expense.

A minimum standard speed for optimal performance of 25x10 (25mpbs download x 10mpbs upload) is required.

Satellite and Wireless Internet service is NOT allowed for this role.

A dedicated space lacking ongoing interruptions to protect member PHI / HIPAA information

** Interview Format*
* As part of our hiring process, we will be using on-demand technology provided by Hire Vue, a third-party vendor. This technology provides our team of recruiters and hiring managers with an enhanced method for decision-making through on-demand candidate assessments.

If you are selected to move forward from your application prescreen, you will receive correspondence inviting you to participate in an on-demand assessment with pre-determined questions. You should anticipate the assessment to take approximately 10-15 minutes.

Your on-demand assessment will be reviewed, and you will subsequently be informed if you will be moving forward to next round of interviews.

** SSN Task via Workday*
* Should you be extended a formal employment offer you will receive a request to enter your SSN into our Workday system to scan for duplicate profiles.

** Work Hours** :
Typical business hours are Monday-Friday, 8 hours/day, 5 days/week-- some flexibility…