Senior Data Engineer
First seen by Alion on Oct 23, 2026.
About the Role :
We're looking for a Senior Data Engineer with strong data architecture and system design skills to design, build, and own end-to-end production pipelines powering analytics and decision-making across the org.
The role centers on deep Python + SQL expertise, robust transaction-level fact tables, and rigorous data quality and auditability, ideally within a finance, risk, or compliance data domain.
What You'll Do :
- Own data architecture and system design decisions for pipelines and data models - grain, partitioning, schema evolution, and scalability tradeoffs.
- Take end-to-end ownership of pipelines in production : design, build, deploy, monitor, and operate.
- Design and build transaction tables (append-only, immutable event/transaction-grain fact tables) alongside standard fact/dimension models using medallion (bronze/silver/gold) architecture.
- Build and support pipelines for finance, risk, or compliance use cases where accuracy, auditability, and data lineage are critical.
- Implement data quality and auditability controls : validation checks, reconciliation logic, anomaly detection, and audit trails for every pipeline you own.
- Write complex, cross-dialect SQL (MySQL + PostgreSQL) : window functions, multi-layered CTEs, CASE-driven logic, COALESCE/NULLIF, type casting, and date/timestamp handling.
- Build idempotent reload patterns (DELETE+INSERT), UNION ALL/set operations, and templated (Jinja-style) SQL including handling for late-arriving/corrected transaction records without double-counting.
- Orchestrate Airflow-style DAGs (Pipeline/BaseTask, ExternalTaskSensor for cross-pipeline deps) with secure credential handling via uSecret.
- Build Python ETL tooling : pandas (CSV <-> DB), SQLAlchemy + raw drivers (MySQLdb, psycopg2), type hints/dataclasses, class-based pipeline design.
- Integrate with Google Drive/Sheets APIs; build YAML-driven pipeline configs; handle Piper staging/user_staging quirks.
- Own CI/CD for pipelines via standard Git workflows.
- Use internal stack day-to-day : OneETL for pipeline authoring, Piper/uWorc for scheduling, Databook for lineage, uSecret for credentials, DSW notebooks for CSV/table work, SourceGraph for code search, Query Builder for ad hoc SQL.
- Document data models and pipeline logic for maintainability, keeping compliance/audit needs in mind.
What We're Looking For :
- 6+ years in data engineering.
- Strong data architecture and system design skills to make sound tradeoffs on modeling, partitioning, and scalability.
- Demonstrated end-to-end production ownership of data pipelines from design through deployment, monitoring, and operational support.
- Expert-level Python + SQL as the primary toolset.
- Robust data quality and auditability practices - validation, reconciliation, anomaly detection, audit trails.
- Experience working with finance, risk, or compliance data.
- Proven experience designing and building transaction/fact tables.
- Strong Python (pandas, SQLAlchemy, type hints/dataclasses, class-based pipelines).
- Airflow-like orchestration experience.
- Solid data modeling fundamentals (fact/dim, normalization, medallion architecture).
- YAML-based config experience; standard CI/CD and Git workflows.
Skills
Data Engineering, Python, SQL, Data Modeling, ETL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Data Architect, Apache Airflow