Data Engineer

About ERT/NGWPC
We are developing next generation, high-performance systems for nationwide flood inundation modeling for the federal government. We are seeking a skilled Data Engineer to architect, build, and optimize the data pipelines and computational infrastructure that power our scientific models. Your work will be critical in realizing and scaling flood modeling solutions developed by your team members to a nationwide level.

About You
A motivated early or mid career engineer with a passion for applying technology to solve real world problems. You are eager to grow your data engineering expertise while learning about science of flood modeling and mapping. You are passionate about contributing to a critical public-sector mission. You are collaborative, detail-oriented, and effective in a team environment.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain scalable and efficient data pipelines for ingesting, processing, and distributing large-scale geospatial and scientific datasets (e.g., terrain, river flows, modeling results).
• Architect and implement cloud-based solutions (AWS) for data storage, management, and high-performance computation.
• Develop and optimize workflow orchestration using tools like Prefect, Airflow, or AWS Step Functions to manage complex scientific modeling jobs.
• Build and containerize applications and services using Docker, ensuring consistency across all environments.
• Implement robust monitoring, logging, and alerting systems to ensure pipeline health and data quality.
• Collaborate with flood modelers and scientists to understand data requirements and engineer effective solutions.
• Write clean, well-documented, and tested code. Conduct thorough code reviews to maintain high standards of quality.
• Manage infrastructure as code (IaC) using tools like Terraform or CloudFormation.

Requirements

• Minimum 4 years of professional working experience, 8+ years preferred
• Strong proficiency in Python, SQL, and DuckDB for building data pipelines and backend services.
• Expertise with cloud platforms (AWS preferred) and their data services (e.g., S3, SQS, Lambda, EC2, Batch, RDS).
• Experience with workflow orchestration tools such as Prefect, Airflow, Luigi, or similar.
• Experience with containerization (Docker) and container orchestration (Kubernetes, Nomad, or ECS).
• Solid understanding of data engineering principles, data structures, and database systems (SQL and NoSQL).
• Proficiency with Git and collaborative development practices.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to design systems for scalability and reliability.
• Must be a US Citizen or Permanent Resident and be able to pass a background investigation to obtain a security badge to enter the applicable government facility.

Desired

• Familiarity with geospatial data concepts, formats (e.g., GeoTIFF, NetCDF, GeoParquet, Shapefile), and libraries (e.g., GDAL, Rasterio).
• Exposure to scientific computing or numerical modeling environments.
• A curiosity about hydrology, hydraulics, or environmental science; motivation to learn the "why" behind the data.
• Experience with high-performance computing (HPC) or GPU-accelerated computing.

Education
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent.

Location
This is a remote position supporting work in Silver Spring, MD.

Compensation
The salary range for this role is approximately $110,000 - 190,000/year. This range is a good faith estimate based on similar roles across the organization. ERT uses several factors when extending an offer, including but not limited to, the position's scope and expected duties, a candidate's work experience, education/training, and key skills.

Benefits
All full-time employees are eligible to participate in our flexible benefits package, which includes:

• Medical, Rx, Dental, and Vision Insurance
• 401(k) retirement plan with company-matching
• 11 Paid Federal Government Holidays
• Paid Time Off (PTO)
• Basic Life & Supplemental Life
• Health Savings Account, Flexible Spending and Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts
• Short-Term & Long-Term Disability
• Employee assistance program (EAP)
• Tuition Reimbursement, Personal Development & Learning Opportunities
• Skills Development & Certifications
• Professional Membership Reimbursement
• Employee Referral Program
• Competitive compensation plan
• Discretionary variable incentive bonuses based on factors such as individual performance, business unit performance, and/or the company's performance
• Publication and Conference Presentation Awards with bonuses

ERT is a VEVRAA Federal Contractor and Equal Opportunity employer - All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or protected Veteran status.

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