Principal Data Engineer

Your Impact

The data systems you build will determine whether millions of Americans can access college. You’ll design the pipelines and analytics infrastructure that inform every decision about the $120 billion federal aid system — from real-time application monitoring to policy analysis that shapes the future of student aid.

The Technical Challenge

You’ll architect and build the data systems that handle:

• Real-time pipelines processing millions of FAFSA applications with sub-hour latency
• Data quality monitoring across dozens of upstream systems (IRS, SSA, Department of Education)
• Privacy-preserving analytics on SSNs, tax returns, and financial data under federal compliance
• ML pipelines that detect fraud, predict completion, and identify at-risk students
• Data warehousing that consolidates 15+ legacy systems and reduces query time from hours to seconds

What You’ll Do

This is a hands-on technical leadership role — you won’t code every day, but when it matters, you’ll dive in to unblock teams and de-risk critical changes. The specific tech stack doesn’t matter — we need engineers who can work with and improve whatever technology serves the mission. Tasks may include:

• Design and build data pipelines that replace manual ETL and Excel-based reporting
• Set technical standards for data modeling and pipeline orchestration across teams
• Make architectural decisions about warehousing, streaming, and ML platforms
• Debug complex data quality issues affecting reporting and policy decisions
• Review PRs across multiple codebases, spotting failure modes and simplifying changes
• Unblock teams by writing code when the mission demands it

Who Succeeds Here

We’re looking for engineers who’ve built at scale in complex environments — typically Staff+ at a strong engineering organization, with experience in most of the following:

• Built or operated systems serving millions of users in production
• Led cross-team technical initiatives over multiple quarters
• Migrated or decomposed legacy systems while keeping critical workflows available
• Stayed hands-on with code — you can still read a diff, trace a request, and ship a fix
• Prioritized outcomes over process — you know when to push back on bureaucracy that slows delivery without adding value

Reality Check

Compensation: This is a GS-15 technical position — the highest rung on the standard government pay scale and roughly equivalent to a Principal Engineer at a top technology company. Full federal benefits included.

The Environment: You’ll face legacy systems, federal compliance, and change-resistant stakeholders. However, you own your technical decisions — shaping architecture, influencing requirements, and driving change through consensus rather than permission.

The Impact: Your code will impact more families than most consumer apps ever reach at one of the most consequential financial moments of their lives. Once you’re in, you have technical autonomy rarely seen in government.

Interview Process

Our interview process is fully remote, consisting of 3-5 conversations that assess work experience, fit, and technical skills.