Staff Data Engineer
First seen by Alion on Aug 11, 2026.
About Shift5
Shift5 is building the data platform for onboard operational technology (OT). We deliver cybersecurity, predictive maintenance, and compliance capabilities that enable defense and commercial fleets to operate with greater readiness, resilience, and mission assurance.
We are seeking a Staff Data Engineer to join our growing Product Engineering team. In this role, your primary responsibility will be to design, build, and maintain data processing, storage, and integration pipelines while acting as a force-multiplier for your team. You will report to our Off Vehicle Manager, Software Engineering, and operate in a team-based environment with engineers, product managers, program managers, and designers to conceive, implement, and shape major features. You’ll be a major factor in generating high-impact products that literally save lives.
What You'll Do
Design & Build Pipelines: Design, build, and maintain robust, scalable batch and streaming data processing, storage, and integration pipelines using technologies such as Apache Airflow or Benthos.
Feature Ownership & Leadership: Interpret requirements and design specifications, taking full ownership of building features from the ground up. Mentor and lead the rest of your team to deliver the right solutions.
Write Quality Code: Write clean, well-documented, scalable, extensible, and testable code to ensure application quality and maintainability.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with data scientists and engineers to create semantic data models representing complex vehicular systems, and integrate applications cleanly across other Shift5 componentry.
Support Stakeholders: Build scalable data products for data scientists, transportation engineers, and executives to drive insights and decision-making.
Cloud Optimization: Create efficient, reliable, cost-effective, dynamically scalable, and observable solutions utilizing AWS cloud services.
Data Analysis & Quality: Analyze complex data sets to create data ontologies, verify data quality/integrity, and ensure data accuracy throughout pipelines.
Field Support: Support the design process and occasionally travel to customer sites (estimated a few times per year) to collaborate with Field Engineers on data integration and deployment.
What Success Looks Like
High-Impact Delivery: You successfully deliver scalable, observable, supportable, and reliable data processing applications that empower customers to run smarter, safer fleets.
End-to-End Ownership: You confidently steer complex data applications from scratch-including requirements gathering, design, planning, and implementation-in a fast-paced environment.
Collaborative Impact: You actively shape product design alongside multidisciplinary teams, acting as a technical leader and force-multiplier for your peers.
Adaptability: You efficiently multitask and smoothly accommodate changing priorities on demand to meet the dynamic needs of a scaling company.
What We’re Looking For
Required:
Engineering Experience: 6+ years of software/data engineering experience with a deep understanding of software engineering practices and concepts.
Core Languages: 6+ years of experience with a major programming language (GoLang, Java, or Python).
Databases & Big Data: 6+ years of relational database experience (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, etc.) alongside 6+ years of experience with Big Data (Hadoop, Spark) and Data Modeling.
Cloud & Containers: 4+ years of experience with containerization and cloud services (Docker, Kubernetes) and cloud monitoring tools.
Data Pipelines & Stack: Expertise with batch and streaming data pipelines (Apache Airflow, Benthos) and familiarity with modern data stack components (ingestion, transformation, orchestration).
Preferred:
U.S. citizenship required and ability to obtain a security clearance.
Education: MS in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Cyber Intelligence, or equivalent.
Data Architecture: Experience and understanding of data lakes/warehouses (e.g., Snowflake, Databricks, Redshift).
DevOps Practices: Proficiency with CI/CD, source control, design reviews, and integrating observable practices.
Advanced Languages & Tools: Experience with Rust, SDK design, and implementation (including code gen of type-specific bindings to Python, Go, TypeScript).
Travel Flexibility: Willingness to travel occasionally to customer and partner sites to support field integration and deployment efforts.
Compensation & Benefits
Base Salary: $185,000 - $220,000
Bonus program and equity in a fast-growing startup
Competitive medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and their families
Health Savings Account with annual employer contributions
Employer-paid Life and Disability Insurance
Uncapped paid time off policy
Flexible work & remote work policy
Tax-deferred public transit benefits with Metro SmartBenefits (DC/MD/VA)
We are committed to building an inclusive culture of belonging that embraces the diversity of our people and represents the communities in which we work and the customers we serve. We know the happiest and highest performing teams include people with diverse perspectives and ways of solving problems. We strive to attract and retain talent from all backgrounds and create workplaces where everyone feels empowered to bring their full, authentic selves to work.
Shift5 is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sexual orientation, gender identify, national origin, disability, age, marital status, ancestry, projected veteran status, or any other protected group or class.
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