Staff Data Engineer

Salary: $202000 - 280000 per year Requirements: We want someone with 8+ years of experience in data engineering and/or data architecture. We expect mastery-level experience building and operating ETL pipelines in production. We need deep expertise in data lake architecture and in systems used to query data lakes. We value strong schema and index design skills, including partitioning, indexing, and clustering approaches. We require experience with column-oriented databases in production environments. We need someone who has built data systems from the ground up, not only maintained existing platforms. We look for proven leadership experience mentoring engineers and driving technical initiatives. You must be a U.S. citizen and able to meet the roles security requirements. Active TS/SCI security clearance with the appropriate polygraph is required and must be maintainable. Responsibilities: We will have you lead the development and operation of a data lake for cyber operations and intelligence data. You will design schemas, partitions, and indexes that keep complex datasets performant and cost-efficient to query. You will partner with engineers and intelligence analysts to define query patterns and data products for mission use cases. You will build and refine ETL pipelines that are observable, recoverable, and resilient to upstream changes. You will drive technical initiatives end to end, from architecture decisions through production launch and iteration. You will establish best practices for data quality, documentation, and operational ownership across the platform. You will mentor engineers on data modeling, performance tuning, and production-grade pipeline design. You will identify bottlenecks in storage, compute, and query layers and deliver improvements with measurable performance gains. Technologies: ETL Support Security Airflow AWS AWS Glue Redshift BigQuery ClickHouse Cloud Graph Database Hive Kafka NATS Neo4J RabbitMQ Spark More: We are Northwind Robotics, founded in 2024 and headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. We are building industrialized offensive cyber operations for the U.S. and its allies, with a mission to strengthen deterrence and protect American and allied primacy in cyberspace. We have raised $138M from Accel, Caffeinated Capital, Friends & Family Capital, Point72 Ventures, General Catalyst, and In-Q-Tel. This is an on-site role in Arlington, VA with occasional travel to Fort Meade, MD. We offer medical, dental, and vision coverage, life and AD&D and disability options, paid parental leave, flexible PTO and paid holidays, 401(k) with pre-tax and Roth options, HSA/FSA choices, and commuter, parking, bike storage, fitness center, and desk setup benefits. We are an equal opportunity employer and support reasonable accommodations during hiring. last updated 28 week of 2026