Senior Data Engineer (W2)

Job Title: Senior Data Engineer / Data Architect

Location: Aldie, VA (Hybrid)
Experience: 14+ Years
Employment Type: Contract (W2)

Job Description

We are seeking a highly experienced Senior Data Engineer / Data Architect to design, build, and lead enterprise-scale data platforms supporting analytics, reporting, and data-driven decision-making. The ideal candidate will have deep expertise in data architecture, cloud data platforms, ETL/ELT pipelines, and big data technologies, along with strong leadership and stakeholder collaboration skills.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and architect scalable, secure, and high-performance data platforms supporting structured and unstructured data.
• Define enterprise data architecture, including data models, data flow diagrams, ingestion patterns, and governance standards.
• Lead the design and development of ETL/ELT pipelines for batch and real-time data processing.
• Build and optimize data warehouses and data lakes using modern cloud-native technologies.
• Collaborate with business stakeholders, product owners, and analytics teams to translate business requirements into technical data solutions.
• Ensure data quality, data integrity, lineage, and metadata management across platforms.
• Establish and enforce data governance, security, and compliance standards.
• Optimize data performance, scalability, and cost across cloud environments.
• Mentor junior data engineers and provide architectural guidance to development teams.
• Support agile delivery processes, participate in design reviews, and contribute to technical roadmaps.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• 14+ years of experience in Data Engineering / Data Architecture.
• Strong experience designing enterprise data architectures.
• Expertise in SQL and data modeling (logical, physical, dimensional).
• Hands-on experience with ETL/ELT tools (Informatica, Talend, DataStage, dbt, or similar).
• Strong experience with cloud data platforms:
• AWS (Redshift, Glue, S3, EMR, Athena)
•  Azure (ADF, Synapse, ADLS)
• Experience building data lakes and lakehouse architectures.
• Strong experience with big data technologies (Spark, PySpark, Hadoop).
• Experience with NoSQL databases (MongoDB, DynamoDB, Cassandra, etc.).
• Hands-on experience with Python / Scala / Java.
• Knowledge of streaming data platforms (Kafka, Kinesis, Pub/Sub).
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform preferred).
• Strong understanding of data security, PII handling, and compliance.
• Excellent communication and documentation skills.

Preferred / Nice-to-Have Skills

• Experience with Snowflake, Data bricks, or Delta Lake.
• Experience with real-time and event-driven architectures.
• Exposure to Master Data Management (MDM) and metadata tools.
• Experience with BI & Analytics tools (Tableau, Power BI, Looker).
• Prior experience in financial services, healthcare, or large enterprise environments.
• Agile / Scrum experience.