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Senior/Staff Data Engineer (HHS)

United States

About Skylight

Skylight is a digital consultancy using design and technology to help government agencies deliver better public services. We’re at the forefront of a civic movement to reinvent how all levels of government serve families, patients, and many others in today's digital world.

If you want to play a part in driving this critical movement forward, we’d love for you to join our growing team of public interest technologists. The work we do matters.

About the job

At Skylight, data engineers design and operate the pipelines and platforms that power modern government services. In this role, you’ll help lead a major modernization effort at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). You’ll work across disciplines — product, design, security, engineering, and data science — to turn strategy into reliable, production-ready systems. Your focus will be building secure, scalable, and efficient data solutions that unlock insights, drive decisions, and improve outcomes for the public. And your impact won’t stop at delivery: you’ll leave behind practices, patterns, and tools that empower federal teams to sustain and expand the work long into the future.

What you’ll do

  • Design, build, and operate production-grade data pipelines and platforms, standardizing ingestion, transformation, and serving with reusable patterns
  • Automate environments and delivery using version control, continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), and infrastructure as code (IaC)
  • Ensure data reliability, performance, and cost-efficiency through observability, quality checks, and optimization of storage and queries
  • Embed privacy and security throughout the data lifecycle, including encryption, access controls, and protections for personally identifiable information (PII)
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teammates to shape usable, accessible data products, dashboards, and APIs, while mentoring others and enabling federal partners

What we're looking for

Minimum qualifications

  • Proven experience designing, building, and operating data systems in production, with strong coding and automation skills
  • Ability to apply modern data engineering practices — modeling, transformation, orchestration, and quality management across varied sources
  • Knowledge of multiple storage and processing paradigms and when to use them for scale, performance, and cost
  • Understanding of privacy, security, and compliance needs for sensitive data, and how to integrate controls into delivery
  • Clear communication with both technical and non-technical audiences, and a commitment to mentoring and knowledge transfer
  • Ability to work successfully in a professional services environment
  • Passion for creating better public outcomes through great government services
  • A mindset and work approach that align with Skylight’s core values

Nice-to-have qualifications

  • Experience modernizing legacy data systems or migrating to cloud platforms
  • Familiarity with event streaming, real-time processing, or analytics/ML pipelines
  • Exposure to compliance contexts such as Authority to Operate (ATO), the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), or the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA)
  • Prior experience in civic tech, government, or other highly regulated environments
  • Experience working effectively on hybrid or distributed teams
  • Ability to spend time on-site at HHS in Washington, DC — either by being based locally or by traveling periodically for in-person collaboration

Don’t meet 100% of the criteria but think you can do the job? We’d love to chat anyway! We’re on a mission to build diverse teams, and studies have shown that women and marginalized folks are less likely to apply to jobs if they don’t check every box.

Other requirements

  • All work must be conducted within the U.S., excluding U.S. territories. Some federal contracts require U.S. citizenship to be eligible for employment.
  • You must be legally authorized to work in the U.S. now and in the future without sponsorship.
  • As a government contractor, you may be required to obtain a public trust or security clearance.
  • You may be required to complete a company background check successfully.
  • Some of our available roles are on federal contracts that require a degree or additional years of experience as a substitute.

Position type

This is a full-time, exempt position.

Location

This is a remote-friendly role. You can be based anywhere in the U.S. Candidates in the Washington, DC area, or those willing to travel there periodically for in-person collaboration, are especially encouraged to apply.

Care package

Salary

We want to give you the most competitive salary possible. After all, you deserve it! To that end, we use the results of our interview process to determine what salary is most appropriate given your current level of seniority. For a Data Engineer at Skylight, the current salary ranges are as follows:

  • Associate Data Engineer: $90,000–$125,000
  • Data Engineer I: $120,000–$140,000
  • Data Engineer II: $135,000–$160,000
  • Senior Data Engineer: $150,000–$185,000
  • Staff Data Engineer: $170,000–$203,000
  • Principal Data Engineer: $180,000–$230,00

Benefits

Your well-being is important to us, so we focus on supporting you in a variety of ways:

  • Medical insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance
  • Short-term and long-term disability insurance
  • Life and AD&D insurance
  • Dependent care FSA, healthcare FSA, health savings account
  • Dollar-for-dollar 401(k) match up to 10% of your salary with no vesting period
  • Flexible paid-time-off policy (generally around 25 days per year), plus 11 paid federal holidays
  • Up to 12 weeks paid-time-off for all eligible new birth, adoption, or foster parents
  • Performance rewards, including annual salary increase, annual performance bonus, spot bonuses, and stock options
  • Business development / sales bonuses
  • Referral bonuses
  • Annual $2,000 allowance for professional development
  • Annual $750 allowance for tech-related purchases
  • Annual swag budget of $100 to display your Skylight pride with some merchandise (hoodies, hats, and more)
  • Dollar-for-dollar charity donation matching, up to $500 per year
  • Flexible, remote-friendly work environment
  • An environment that empowers you to unleash your superpowers for public good

Interview preparation

We want you to have a great interview experience with us! Here are some tips to help you prepare for a successful interview:

  • Visit our join page to learn more about how our interview process works.
  • Check out our Career Pathways framework to learn more about the different roles within Skylight and the skills needed to do them.
  • If you’d like to request reasonable accommodations during the application or interviewing process, please contact our recruiting team at recruiting@skylight.digital.

We participate in E-Verify and upon hire, will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you’re authorized to work in the U.S.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, disability, veteran status, or any other category protected by applicable law.

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