Data Engineer (w/ active Secret)

Location: Norfolk, VA

Clearance: Secret

Type: Full-time, Onsite

Salary Range: $87,000 - $112,000

Job Description

Critical Solutions is seeking a Data Engineer to support our federal customer.

The Data Engineer designs, builds, integrates, and sustains secure enterprise data solutions that enable reliable analytics, reporting, operational insight, and informed decision-making. The position develops scalable data pipelines, integrates data from diverse sources, improves data quality and availability, and supports cloud and on-premises platforms in a mission-critical environment. The Data Engineer works closely with business intelligence, cybersecurity, infrastructure, application, and program teams to translate operational requirements into governed, supportable, and reusable data products; and will contribute to modernization activities in an Agile/DevOps operating culture.

Primary Roles And Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test, deploy, and maintain scalable ETL/ELT pipelines that collect, transform, validate, and deliver structured and unstructured data from enterprise systems, applications, APIs, logs, files, and databases.
• Build and optimize data models, schemas, tables, views, and curated data sets that support analytics, business intelligence, operational reporting, and downstream application requirements.
• Develop data-processing solutions using SQL, Python, and other approved technologies; apply reusable engineering patterns, source control, peer review, and documented release practices.
• Integrate cloud and on-premises data platforms while supporting secure data movement, interoperability, availability, retention, and performance across hybrid enterprise environments.
• Implement automated data-quality checks, reconciliation controls, monitoring, alerting, and exception handling to identify incomplete, inaccurate, duplicated, delayed, or failed data flows.
• Troubleshoot pipeline failures, data discrepancies, performance degradation, access issues, and integration defects; perform root-cause analysis and implement corrective and preventive actions.
• Partner with analysts, business intelligence developers, data owners, system administrators, and mission stakeholders to define data requirements, source-to-target mappings, transformation rules, service expectations, and acceptance criteria.
• Apply data governance, security, privacy, least-privilege access, auditability, and records-retention requirements throughout the data lifecycle in coordination with cybersecurity and compliance teams.
• Support platform upgrades, data migrations, modernization initiatives, capacity planning, and performance tuning while minimizing disruption to production services.
• Create and maintain technical documentation, including architecture diagrams, data dictionaries, lineage documentation, interface specifications, runbooks, standard operating procedures, and troubleshooting guides.
• Participate in Agile planning, backlog refinement, technical reviews, demonstrations, incident response, and after-hours support activities when required to sustain mission-critical services.

Basic Qualifications

• Must be a U.S. citizen and possess an active DoD Secret Security Clearance or higher.
• B.S Degree and 4–8 years of prior relevant experience or Masters with 2–6 years of prior relevant experience in data engineering, computer science, information systems, software engineering, mathematics, or a related technical discipline, with at least four years of relevant experience; additional directly related experience may be considered in place of a degree.
• Must possess and maintain an IAT Level II certification that satisfies applicable DoD cybersecurity workforce requirements.
• Must be located in either San Diego, California; the Hampton Roads, Virginia area or Jacksonville, FL
• At least three years of hands-on experience developing, operating, or supporting production data pipelines, data integrations, data warehouses, data lakes, or comparable enterprise data solutions.
• Demonstrated proficiency with SQL and at least one general-purpose scripting or programming language, such as Python, for data extraction, transformation, validation, automation, and troubleshooting.
• Experience with ETL/ELT concepts, relational data structures, data modeling, schema design, source-to-target mapping, data quality, metadata, and lifecycle management.
• Experience integrating data from multiple source types, including relational databases, APIs, flat files, application data, system logs, or message-based interfaces.
• Working knowledge of cloud and on-premises infrastructure concepts, authentication and authorization, network connectivity, encryption, secure file transfer, and service accounts as they relate to data engineering.
• Experience diagnosing production data issues, analyzing logs and metrics, resolving failed jobs or performance problems, and documenting root cause and corrective action.
• Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a high-tempo operational environment, manage competing priorities, communicate technical information clearly, and produce complete technical documentation.
• Working knowledge of PowerShell, Python, and Ansible, with practical familiarity using large language models (LLMs) and AI-enabled tools.

Preferred Qualifications

• Business intelligence experience, including development or support of dashboards, reports, semantic models, key performance indicators, and self-service analytics solutions; experience with Microsoft Power BI (and associated DAX knowledge) is highly desirable.
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104) certification.
• Hands-on experience with Azure data and analytics services, such as Azure Data Factory, Azure SQL, Azure Storage, Synapse Analytics, Databricks, or comparable cloud data platforms.
• Familiarity with Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs), the Risk Management Framework (RMF), vulnerability management processes, system hardening, security controls, and applicable compliance frameworks.
• Experience using automation, configuration-management, source-control, or continuous integration and delivery tools such as Ansible, Jenkins, and Bitbucket.
• Experience designing or supporting data solutions in classified, DoD, federal government, or other highly regulated environments.
• Experience with modern data-platform concepts and technologies, including data lakes, lake houses, dimensional modeling, streaming or event-driven data, distributed processing, or containerized workloads.
• Experience implementing data cataloging, lineage, master or reference data, role-based access controls, audit logging, backup and recovery, and disaster-recovery practices.
• Relevant technical certifications in Azure, data engineering, database administration, analytics, cloud architecture, or security.
• Strong customer engagement, requirements analysis, technical presentation, mentoring, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Experience with graph databases (e.g., Neo4j) and query languages such as Cypher; modeling entities and relationships as a property graph.
• Familiarity with knowledge graphs, ontologies, or semantic data models and controlled vocabularies.
• Experience with entity resolution / record linkage and reconciling conflicting values across multiple authoritative sources into a single trusted record.

Certification Requirement

• Must possess and maintain an IAT Level II certification that satisfies applicable DoD cybersecurity workforce requirements.

LOCATION:

• On-site 100%. Norfolk, VA
• Other acceptable work location: San Diego, California or Jacksonville, FL

Additional Information

CLEARANCE REQUIREMENT: Must possess an active DoD Secret Clearance. In addition, selected candidate must undergo background investigation (BI) and finger printing by the federal agency and successfully pass the preceding to qualify for the position. US CITIZENSHIP IS REQUIRED.

Critical Solutions Pay And Benefits

Salary range $87,00 - $112,000.Salary range may vary depending on location. The salary range for this position represent the typical salary range for this job level and this does not guarantee a specific salary. Compensation is based upon multiple factors such as responsibilities of the job, education, experience, knowledge, skills, certifications, and other requirements.

BENEFIT SNAPSHOT: 100% premium coverage for Medical, Dental, Vision, and Life Insurance, Supplemental Insurance, 401K matching, Flexible Time Off (PTO/Holidays), Higher Education/Training Reimbursement, and more.