Principal Data Engineer
willistowerswatson
information technology

Job Description:

The Principal Data Engineer is a senior, hands on technical leader responsible for designing, building, and evolving scalable, reliable, and cost efficient data and analytic platforms that power analytics, reporting, and advanced AI predictive use cases. This role sets engineering standards, drives platform modernization, and mentors engineering teams while partnering closely with architecture, analytics, product, and governance stakeholders.

Daily Responsibilities:

Lead the design and evolution of enterprise scale data platforms, including ingestion, transformation, storage, and consumption layers Define and enforce data engineering standards, patterns, and best practices (e.g., pipeline design, testing, CI/CD, observability) Serve as a technical authority on data architecture decisions, trade offs, and platform strategy Design, build, and optimize high performance batch and streaming data pipelines Improve reliability, performance, scalability, and cost efficiency of existing data assets Implement reusable frameworks and reference architectures to accelerate delivery across teams Design and operate Databricks based lakehouse solutions using Delta Lake, Spark, and notebooks/jobs Establish best practices for Databricks workspace architecture, security, performance tuning, and cost management Lead or support migrations to Databricks and modernization of legacy data pipelines Partner with data governance and security teams to embed data quality checks, metadata, lineage, and access controls into pipelines Ensure platforms support regulatory, compliance, and enterprise risk requirements Work closely with data architects, analytic engineers, data scientists, product owners, and business stakeholders Translate business and analytic requirements into scalable technical solutions Influence roadmaps by tying platform investments to measurable business outcomes Mentor senior and mid level engineers; raise the overall technical bar of the team Lead by example through hands on contribution to critical pipelines and platform components

Job Requirements:

University or college degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Mathematics, Engineering, Statistics, or related field of study. 8+ years of experience in data engineering or platform engineering roles Deep expertise in building large scale data pipelines and platforms in cloud environments (Azure, AWS, or GCP) Strong proficiency with distributed data processing (e.g., Spark) Advanced SQL and strong Python programming skills Experience designing data models and architectures for analytics and downstream consumption Experience in data ingestion tools such as Matillion, FiveTran, Airbyte, etc. a plus Strong analytical skills and experience with data modeling Strong project management and organizational skills Proven ability to work independently and with a team Extensive hands on experience with Databricks and Lakehouse architecture strongly preferred Experience with Delta Lake, Spark optimization, and cost/performance tuning strongly preferred Experience supporting advanced analytics, machine learning, or AI driven use cases Familiarity with modern data tooling (e.g., orchestration, data quality frameworks, metadata/catalog tools) Prior experience setting engineering standards or leading platform modernization initiatives

Compensation:

The base salary compensation range being offered for this role is $180,000.00 to $225,000.00 USD annually.

Job Location(s):

Stamford, Connecticut

Source:

Company Career Section

Competition:

N/A

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