Principal Data Engineer Data Enablement - DataSF

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Specific informationregardingthis recruitment process are listed below:

About the Office of the City Administrator:
The Office of the City Administrator and its 25+ divisions and departments operate core internal and public-facing services in San Francisco.
The Office of the City Administrator’s Mission and Vision
Our vision is to lead the nation in public administration and to enable City departments to effectively deliver critical public services. We aim to help the city run better, to connect San Francisco residents and constituents to the vital public services they seek, and to create a meaningful and diverse work culture that is the place of choice for people who are invested in a career in public service.

We are committed to ensuring that City services are inclusive, efficient, equitable, and culturally competent for San Franciscans of all races, ethnic backgrounds, religions, and sextual orientations. This commitment requires comprehensive review and thorough analysis of existing practices and policies to remove barriers to real inclusion. We are also committed to ensuring that we have a safe, equitable, and inclusive workplace for individuals of all races.

This includes creating opportunities for hiring, promotion, training, and development, for all employees, including but not limited to, Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC).

Want to build robust and scalable data infrastructure to power data-driven City services? Join the DataSF team to empower and expand the use of data in government!

DataSF’s mission is to transform the way San Francisco works with data. We believe that data, when harnessed effectively, can improve transparency, resident engagement, and government performance. We are committed to removing barriers and making it easier for all people to access services and knowledge, and we actively seek team members whose diverse life experiences reflect the residents we serve. The department has a hybrid work schedule.

As DataSF grows to support every city department and their diverse needs, we’re formalizing the data practice that sits around the platform—clear service offerings, consistent onboarding, intuitive self‑service tools, and reliable data quality standards. This role is the principal engineer leading that effort. You’ll own the department‑facing experience: how teams learn to work with DataSF, what they can expect from our services, and how projects are defined and delivered.

You’ll combine strong platform and data engineering depth with the ability to translate departmental needs into actionable, scalable solutions. Starting as an individual contributor partnering closely with two analytics engineers, the role may evolve to manage a small team as our practice grows.

Examples of Important and Essential Duties:

• Own the full department engagement lifecycle—from initial conversation through scoping, onboarding, delivery, and ongoing support.
• Define and publish the DataSF service catalog, clearly outlining what constitutes standard queue work, what requires a scoped project, and what triggers an interagency agreement, using measurable criteria.
• Partner directly with departments to understand and model their data domains, translating those needs into actionable requirements the platform can serve.
• Shape the analytics engineering practice, including dbt models, department pipelines, data quality approaches, and reusable standards the team relies on.
• Build self‑service pathways that allow departments to discover data, assess its trustworthiness, and request access without needing to know whom to contact.
• Own data quality standards and trust signals—freshness, completeness, lineage—so users understand what assumptions they can make about each dataset.
• Integrate governance and data‑readiness requirements into the onboarding process rather than treating them as afterthoughts.
• Set and maintain clear scope expectations with departments and perform related duties as assigned.

Education:

An associate degree in computer science, computer engineering, information systems, or a closely…