Data Platform Engineer
About The Role
Peraton is seeking a Principal Data Platform Engineer to join their dynamic team in a remote capacity within the United States. This role is instrumental in designing, building, and maintaining a cutting-edge data and AI platform supporting federal background investigation work.
This role is a founding owner of a greenfield platform, responsible for architecting the entire data infrastructure from scratch, ensuring it meets stringent compliance standards such as FedRAMP Moderate, NIST 800-171, and CUI handling. You will collaborate closely with cloud engineering teams across infrastructure and security boundaries, establishing foundational data governance, cataloging, lineage, and access controls.
The role offers an excellent opportunity for a highly skilled data engineer to lead the development of a modern, scalable, and secure data platform that will serve as the backbone for advanced data science and machine learning initiatives. The position requires a hands-on approach, focusing on delivering a reliable, performant, and cost-effective platform that supports the evolving needs of our data teams and organizational objectives.
Qualifications
U.S. citizenship is required.
Ability to obtain and maintain a T5/SSBI federally adjudicated clearance; active clearance preferred.
Minimum of 8+ years of experience in data engineering or data platform engineering with demonstrated principal-level ownership.
Proven experience in establishing a data platform or lakehouse from scratch, owning architecture and end-to-end build processes.
Expertise in designing batch and streaming data pipelines, with proficiency in SQL-based transformations on lakehouse or Delta foundations.
Hands-on experience with infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform and CI/CD pipelines for data workloads, including environment promotion from development to production.
Strong knowledge of platform-level data governance, including cataloging, lineage, and fine-grained access control.
Extensive cloud experience with major providers, preferably Azure; AWS or GCP considered.
Proficiency in Python and SQL.
Experience partnering across infrastructure/security boundaries and setting technical standards for engineering teams.
Excellent analytical, troubleshooting, and communication skills.
Minimum of 12 years of total work experience with a Bachelor’s degree or higher.
Responsibilities
Design and establish a comprehensive data and AI platform from the ground up, including architecture, compute, storage, and lakehouse foundation.
Implement the platform as code using Terraform and develop CI/CD pipelines to facilitate smooth promotion of work from development to production environments.
Establish and enforce data governance practices, including cataloging, lineage, and access controls, as foundational components of the platform.
Build and own the data ingestion, transformation, and pipeline layers to convert raw and synthetic data into analysis-ready, governed data products.
Define artifact promotion processes to ensure only validated and signed artifacts are deployed into the production environment.
Partner with cloud engineering teams across infrastructure and security domains, ensuring clear ownership and integration of platform components.
Enable data science and machine learning teams by providing robust platform capabilities, governed data, and tooling support for model development and deployment.
Ensure platform reliability, performance, and cost management as usage scales, implementing best practices for operational excellence.
Set engineering standards, develop documentation, and promote best practices to support a growing data engineering team.
Benefits
Competitive salary range of $146,000 to $234,000, commensurate with experience and qualifications.
Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance plans.
Retail savings options and flexible work arrangements.
Opportunities for professional development and continuous learning.
Engagement in mission-critical projects supporting national security and defense.
Collaborative and innovative work environment focused on cutting-edge technology solutions.
Equal Opportunity
We are an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion. We provide equal employment opportunities to all qualified individuals without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We celebrate diversity and are dedicated to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.