Senior Data Engineer

Salary: $115,000 - 155,000 per year Requirements: U.S. citizenship and eligibility for a DoD Secret clearance. Bachelors or masters degree in computer science, data, AI/ML, or a related field. 7+ years of hands-on experience delivering data, AI, or machine learning solutions. Strong understanding of ETL, ELT, data pipelines, and enterprise data and storage systems, including technologies such as OpenSearch/Elasticsearch, Kafka, Amazon Bedrock, Glue, Databricks, Snowflake, S3, RDS, EBS, or Glacier. Experience with vector databases, embeddings, related data structures and formats, services, and APIs, such as FAISS, PGVector, OpenSearch/Elasticsearch, Hugging Face, Pinecone, or Bedrock Knowledge Base. Generative AI and LLM experience, including tool calls (MCP) and agents (A2A). Familiarity with leading AI APIs, such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Bedrock, or Vertex, for LLMs and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, such as GitLab, GitHub, or Jenkins. Experience with VS Code and AI extensions such as Cline or Claude Code. Strong communication skills and a client-oriented mindset. Preferred: curiosity about AI innovations and a focus on delivering mission impact. Preferred: Python proficiency and familiarity with frameworks and libraries such as PySpark, Pandas, uv, Pydantic, FastAPI, CrewAI, LangChain, LangGraph, or Unstructured. Preferred: experience with infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform, OpenTofu, AWS CDK, or CloudFormation. Preferred: experience with agentic frameworks such as Agent2Agent Protocol, AWS Bedrock Agents, Mastra, CrewAI, Strands, or AgentCore. Preferred: exposure to adjacent areas such as data science, UI/UX, cloud engineering, or platform engineering. Preferred: knowledge of federal cybersecurity, RMF, FedRAMP, or other regulatory frameworks. Responsibilities: Build and optimize pipelines that prepare, clean, and structure data for generative AI and LLM applications. Manage large datasets across cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, and GCP using data lake and warehouse technologies. Implement medallion architecture with Bronze, Silver, and Gold layers to support data quality, lineage, and accessibility. Model, query, and load large-scale datasets using SQL and NoSQL systems. Monitor, tune, and maintain high-performance data stores for analytics and reporting. Collaborate with data engineers, software engineers, and data scientists to develop operational agentic AI systems. Automate model deployment workflows using infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines, and container orchestration tools. Monitor deployed AI systems, tune performance, and apply practices that support reliability and scalability. Write clean, well-documented code in accordance with industry and federal guidelines, supporting reproducible development. Keep up with AI/ML trends and tools, and learn through mentorship and technical design reviews. Technologies: Agentic AI AI AWS OpenSearch Azure CI/CD Claude Code Cloud Databricks ETL ElasticSearch FastAPI GCP GitHub GitLab Support Jenkins Kafka LLM Machine Learning MCP NoSQL Python PySpark RAG SQL Security Snowflake Terraform VS Code pandas UX UI Design More: We are Credence, a 1,700-plus-person organization with more than 1,500 AI and data experts and over 100 prime contracts. Our AI, cloud, cybersecurity, and modernization work supports federal agencies and advances national security, health, and humanitarian missions. We have been recognized as a Washington Post Top Workplace for six consecutive years and included in the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in 13 of the past 14 years. We welcome employees who want to grow, collaborate, and contribute to meaningful change. We are seeking a Senior AI Data Engineer for our growing AI and Automation practice, where you will serve as a technical anchor and help deliver cloud-native AI capabilities for federal missions. The role offers opportunities to learn from technical leaders, explore agentic AI, and contribute to a culture of innovation, trust, collaboration, and mission success. The annual salary range is $115,000–$155,000, with compensation based on experience, education, certifications, skills, and overall qualifications. Benefits include medical, dental, and vision coverage; retirement plans; life insurance; paid vacation, sick leave, and holidays; family leave; short- and long-term disability; training and development; and wellness resources. last updated 41 week of 2026