Hilsborough County Sheriff's Office Data Engineer & Machine Learning Engineer

This posting is for 2 separate jobs within the same project - Data Engineer & Machine Learning Engineer.

Job Title: Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office Data Engineer

Summary: Build and maintain business intelligence solutions for the Sheriff s Office to include law enforcement, detention, human resources, finance, and integration of data from agency criminal justice partners.

Duties & Responsibilities

Duties may vary based on assignment.

• Design and develop BI solutions.
• Gather user requirements, develop technical and functional requirements, produce reporting solutions, and document the design and development process, metadata, and business rules.
• Model, implement, and maintain databases and data marts to support BI reporting.
• Develop extract, transform, load (ETL) to support the loading of data into data marts.
• Monitor the data quality of existing databases and data marts and recommend governance and control around self-service BI/Analytics considering the evolution of the BI Industry s best practices.
• Perform other related duties as required.

Knowledge & Abilities

• Knowledge of building automated data validation and reconciliation checks to ensure data accuracy, integrity, and completeness.
• Knowledge of designing data warehouses and data marts that support analytics, ML, and dashboard reporting.
• Knowledge of dimensional modeling and star/snowflake schemas.
• Basic understanding of secure coding principles and CJIS data protection guidelines.
• Working knowledge of office policies and procedures.
• Proficiency in C# or Python.
• Proficient in writing optimized SQL queries, functions, and stored procedures for SQL Server and PostgreSQL.
• Experience designing and maintaining ETL / ELT pipelines using frameworks such as Apache Airflow, DBT (Data Build Tool), or equivalent orchestration systems, with the ability to schedule, monitor, and recover complex multi-stage jobs.
• Proficiency in cleaning, merging, and reshaping data using Pandas, Polars, or SQL.
• Strong debugging and troubleshooting skills in both application and database layers.
• Effective communication and interpersonal skills for interacting with users and technical staff.
• Ability to dissect complex problems, experiment methodically, and find practical, innovative solutions.
• Ability to prioritize and manage multiple tasks in a dynamic environment.
• Ability to perform exploratory data analysis to detect trends, anomalies, and data quality issues.

Minimum Education & Experience

• A high school diploma or possession of a GED certificate.
• Seven years of paid experience in the development of BI solutions.
• Seven years working with ETL tools with at least four years with SSIS.
• Seven years developing reports with at least three years with SSRS or Crystal Reports.
• Three years of experience with T-SQL and database design.

OR

• An associate degree from an accredited institution of higher education in a technical field.
• Six years of paid experience in the development of BI solutions.
• Six years working with ETL tools with at least three years with SSIS.
• Six years developing reports with at least two years with SSRS or Crystal Reports.
• Three years of experience with T-SQL and database design.

OR

• A bachelor s degree from an accredited institution of higher education in a technical field.
• Five years of paid experience in the development of BI solutions.
• Five years working with ETL tools with at least two years with SSIS.
• Five years developing reports with at least one year with SSRS or Crystal Reports.
• Three years of experience with T-SQL and database design.

OR

• Four years of experience in a Hillsborough County Sheriff s Office Information Services Division position.

Additional Job Requirements

• Attendance at the specified Sheriff's Office work location is required.
• Depending on assignment, employees may be required to possess a valid Florida Driver License at time of employment. Driving history will be thoroughly reviewed and may be grounds for disqualification.
• No visible tattoos on face, head, and neck. Tattoos determined to take away from the professional appearance of the Sheriff's Office must be covered with an appropriate white, black, or neutral covering.
• No illegal drug sale within lifetime.
• No illegal drug use within the past 36 months. No marijuana use within the last 12 months.
• No felony convictions within lifetime.
• No misdemeanor convictions involving perjury, false statement, or domestic violence within lifetime.
• No dishonorable discharge from any branch of the United States Armed Forces, the United States Coast Guard, National Guard, or Reserve Forces.
• Successful completion of a background investigation including criminal, reference, employment, and neighborhood checks; polygraph; medical evaluation; and drug screening.
• Live within Hillsborough County or within Citrus, Hardee, Hernando, Lake, Manatee, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk, Sarasota, or Sumter County as long as the residence is located within the 60-mile parameter of Falkenburg Road Jail at the time of appointment/employment (certified only).

The duties and responsibilities on this job description represent the essential functions that an employee must be able to satisfactorily perform with or without reasonable accommodations. Reasonable accommodations shall be made upon request to enable employees with disabilities to perform the essential functions of their job, absent undue agency hardship. The Sheriff s Office retains the right to change or assign other duties to this job as necessary.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with dashboard visualization tools such as Tableau or QlikView.
• Experience with programming experience in C Sharp (C#).
• Experience with Agile software development lifecycle.
• Knowledge of advanced data warehousing techniques.

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Job Title: Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office Machine Learning Engineer

Summary: Design, build, and support custom applications and data integrations to enhance agency operations, with a focus on functionality, performance, and secure handling of sensitive information.

Duties & Responsibilities

Duties may vary based on assignment.

• Develop, train, and optimize machine learning models using frameworks such as ML.NET, Scikit-Learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch, or Keras.
• Integrate artificial intelligence (AI) models into existing in-house applications and services running in secure on-prem environments.
• Experiment with large language models (LLMs) and agentic coding tools, evaluating their potential for secure, internal automation and analytics tasks.
• Perform data preprocessing, feature engineering, and model evaluation using structured and unstructured data from multiple internal systems.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure all models and data workflows align with Criminal Justice Information Systems (CJIS) and Personally Identifiable Information (PII) protection standards.
• Work closely with analysts, investigators, and Information Technology (IT) staff to identify opportunities where AI can provide operational value.
• Participate in code reviews, testing, and deployment activities within a collaborative team environment.
• Continuously learn and prototype emerging AI tools while maintaining strong data governance discipline.
• Perform other related duties as required.

Knowledge & Abilities

• Knowledge of machine learning frameworks such as ML.NET, Scikit-Learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch, or Keras.
• Knowledge of Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines, and AI agent frameworks.
• Basic understanding of secure coding principles and CJIS data protection requirements.
• Working knowledge of office policies and procedures.
• Ability to work with structured and unstructured datasets from multiple sources such as databases, APIs, logs, and documents.
• Ability to analyze complex problems, test possible solutions, and apply practical, innovative approaches.
• Ability to prioritize and manage multiple tasks in a fast-paced environment.
• Ability to stay curious and continuously learn new AI tools and techniques while maintaining responsible data practices.

Skills

• Strong programming skills in C# or Python.
• Skill in writing optimized SQL queries, functions, and stored procedures for SQL Server and PostgreSQL.
• Skill in developing and evaluating machine learning models.
• Effective communication and interpersonal skills for interacting with users and technical staff.

Working Conditions

• Work within an office environment within a law enforcement agency.
• Stand/sit at a keyboard or workstation for prolonged periods.
• May engage in light physical exertion (e.g., lifting, carrying, pushing and/or pulling of objects and materials up to 10 pounds).
• Work standard business hours.
• May work non-standard hours including nights, weekends, and holidays.
• In the event of an emergency or disaster, may be required to respond promptly to duties and responsibilities as assigned by management chain, Division/District Commander, or the Sheriff (or their designee). Such assignments may be for before, during or after the emergency/disaster.

Minimum Education & Experience

• A high school diploma or possession of a GED certificate.
• Six years of paid experience in software development or systems integration, including reporting, data integration, and database technologies.

OR

• An associate degree from an accredited institution of higher education in computer science, information technology, software development or a closely related field.
• Five years of paid experience in software development or systems integration, including reporting, data integration, and database technologies.

OR

• A bachelor s degree from an accredited institution of higher education in computer science, information technology, software development or a closely related field.
• Four years of paid experience in software development or systems integration, including reporting, data integration, and database technologies.

OR

• Three years of experience in a technical position within the Hillsborough County Sheriff s Office Information Services Division, involving software development, systems integration, data reporting, or database management aligned with the duties outlined in this job description.

Additional Job Requirements

• Attendance at the specified Sheriff's Office work location is required.
• Depending on assignment, employees may be required to possess a valid Florida Driver License at time of employment. Driving history will be thoroughly reviewed and may be grounds for disqualification.
• No visible tattoos on face, head, and neck. Tattoos determined to take away from the professional appearance of the Sheriff s Office must be covered with an appropriate white, black, or neutral covering.
• No illegal drug sale within lifetime.
• No illegal drug use within the past 36 months. No marijuana use within the last 12 months.
• No felony convictions within lifetime.
• No misdemeanor convictions involving perjury, false statement, or domestic violence within lifetime.
• No dishonorable discharge from any branch of the United States Armed Forces, the United States Coast Guard, National Guard, or Reserve Forces.
• Successful completion of a background investigation including criminal, reference, employment, and neighborhood checks; polygraph; medical evaluation; and drug screening.
• Live within Hillsborough County or within Citrus, Hardee, Hernando, Lake, Manatee, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk, Sarasota, or Sumter County as long as the residence is located within the 60-mile parameter of Falkenburg Road Jail at the time of appointment/employment (certified only).

The duties and responsibilities on this job description represent the essential functions that an employee must be able to satisfactorily perform with or without reasonable accommodations. Reasonable accommodations shall be made upon request to enable employees with disabilities to perform the essential functions of their job, absent undue agency hardship. The Sheriff s Office retains the right to change or assign other duties to this job as necessary.

Preferred Qualifications

• Familiarity with LangChain, Ollama, or other frameworks for running local LLMs and agentic AI systems.
• Experience with vector databases (e.g., Chroma, Qdrant, Weaviate) for semantic search.
• Experience building APIs or services to expose ML models to other internal systems.
• Experience working with data-centric applications in public sector or regulated environments.

The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office is an Equal Opportunity Employer; we believe that diversity and inclusion among our applicants and employees is critical to our success as a community partner. We seek to offer employment opportunities without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, national origin, age, physical/mental disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information, and military/veteran status.