Data Operations Engineer

Description

The company is hiring a Data Operations Engineer to keep mission-critical data reliable, available and delivered on time. This customer-facing DataOps role coordinates technical operations, guides the people who own each dataflow, and helps move high-volume data pipelines toward automated, proactively monitored services.

The role supports a customer site in Fort Meade, MD.

Responsibilities

• Act as the technical contact for customer stakeholders, turning mission data needs into engineering tasks, workflows and clear delivery expectations.
• Lead day-to-day DataOps work and coordinate the flow owners who monitor, maintain and improve data infrastructure.
• Deploy and maintain dataflows using standard engineering templates, core libraries and reusable processes.
• Watch pipeline health, data availability, system uptime and discovery latency across distributed messaging, orchestration and cloud environments.
• Tune cluster and pipeline performance, diagnose recurring dataflow and platform stability problems, and coordinate fixes.
• Build automated quality gates, schema checks and validation workflows that protect production data integrity.
• Improve ETL workflows, metadata completeness, network data handling and the consistency of data delivered to analysts and customers.
• Use scripting, automation and operational feedback to shift from reactive troubleshooting to proactive, adaptive data operations.
• Share proven workflows and technical approaches across teams, and report operational status and platform changes to stakeholders.

Requirements

• U.S. citizenship and a current, active U.S. Government Secret clearance, with the ability to obtain and maintain TS/SCI.
• At least 9 years of experience in technical operations, systems engineering or data management with a relevant bachelor's degree, 7 years with a related master's degree, or 13 years with a high-school diploma or equivalent.
• Proven work supporting high-volume dataflows and storage across distributed messaging systems, data orchestration engines and cloud-native storage platforms.
• Experience with observability and log-analysis tools to track system health, dataflow performance and data discovery latency.
• Understanding of network data, metadata completeness or fill rates, and common log and data formats such as JSON and XML.
• Experience managing ETL workflows and using SQL to check data quality with technical teams and customers.
• Ability to automate repeatable operational tasks in Python or Java, using reusable shared libraries.
• Ability to troubleshoot distributed dataflow issues, support performance tuning, and build automated quality checks and schema validation.
• Strong customer-facing communication, technical coordination and requirements-translation skills, including explaining complex systems to nontechnical audiences.
• Able to work on site in Fort Meade, MD, four to five days per week, and adjust to changes in the customer schedule.
• Nice to have: a currently active TS/SCI clearance.
• Nice to have: prior customer-facing engineering, technical account management or customer success experience.
• Nice to have: experience designing or operating scalable distributed processing and cloud-native storage architectures.
• Nice to have: experience supporting cyber or network-security operations.
• Nice to have: knowledge of automated attribute-based access control (ABAC) or data masking in production pipelines.

Conditions

On site in Fort Meade, MD, typically four to five days per week; this may change with customer requirements.

Salary range for Maryland: $103,690 - $160,605 USD. Pay depends on factors such as location, federal contract labor category, prior experience, skills, education and certifications.

Equal opportunity employer.

Benefits

• Comprehensive health coverage including medical, dental and vision.
• Health Savings Account with company contribution.
• Annual paid time off and paid holidays.
• Paid parental leave.
• 401k with a generous company match.
• Coverage for financial wellness, retirement planning, family assistance and continued education.
• Training and development opportunities.
• Award programs and company-sponsored events.