Associate Data Engineer 2027

IBM; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 70,000 - 95,000; Full time

Job summary

IBM Austin is seeking an Associate Data Engineer to transform data into insights for global clients across digital transformation, cloud strategy, and AI adoption. You will support data gathering, storage, and real-time processing while collaborating with diverse teams.

The role emphasizes building scalable pipelines, selecting data management solutions, and delivering actionable visuals. Start date anticipated in 2027, with opportunities for growth through IBM's AI-driven learning platform.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree required.
• Experience building data pipelines with ETL/ELT processes.
• Proficiency in SQL, Python and data warehousing tools.
• Willingness to travel up to 100% based on project requirements.

Responsibilities

• Design scalable data architecture and manage cloud-based data environments.
• Optimize data pipelines for performance.
• Develop ETL/ELT ingestion pipelines.
• Collect and analyze data to provide insights for clients.
• Create dashboards and reports for stakeholders.
• Ensure data quality and preprocessing procedures.
• Translate client requirements into technical solutions.

Skills

Data modeling

ETL/ELT pipelines

SQL

Python

Cloud basics

Data visualization

Communication

Team collaboration

Education

Bachelor's Degree

Tools

dbt

Snowflake

BigQuery

Airflow

CI/CD basics

Job description

Come forge the future like an IBMer! Ready to think boldly, work with some of the world's most recognized brands, and kick-start your career? Welcome to the IBM's Associate Program for university hires.

Introduction

Come forge the future like an IBMer! Ready to think boldly, work with some of the world's most recognized brands, and kick-start your career? Welcome to the IBM's Associate Program for university hires.

From day one, you'll collaborate with global clients and contribute to projects that help organizations solve their toughest challenges across digital transformation, cloud strategy, AI adoption, and process redesign - working alongside a global cohort of diverse, ambitious peers. As an Associate, you'll have access to industry-recognized certifications, digital badges, and a minimum of 40 hours of structured learning per year on IBM's AI-driven learning platform - supported by coaches, mentors, and thriving professional communities across practices. IBM's culture of internal mobility means you'll have the freedom to explore new technologies, industries, and career paths as your interests evolve.

Bring your curiosity. Grow your skills. Build whats next - like an IBMer.

To give yourself the best opportunity for success, we advise applying only to roles that align with your skills and experience, rather than applying broadly across all entry-level positions. You'll receive a status update email for each application, so be sure to check your IBM Careers account regularly — it's the best way to get a centralized view of which roles you have active applications against.

Your Role And Responsibilities

As an Associate Data Engineer at IBM you will harness the power of data to unveil captivating stories and intricate patterns. You'll contribute to data gathering, storage, and both batch and real-time processing.

Collaborating closely with diverse teams, you'll play an important role in deciding the most suitable data management systems and identifying the crucial data required for insightful analysis. As a Data Engineer, you'll tackle obstacles related to database integration and untangle complex, unstructured data sets.

These positions are anticipated to start in 2027.

Key Responsibilities May Include

• Assisting in designing and implementing scalable data architecture and management systems tailored for modern cloud environments.
• Work on optimizing existing data pipelines and processes for improved performance.
• Work with ETL/ELT ingestion pipelines.
• Collect and analyze data to identify trends, providing clients with actionable insights to enhance marketing, operational, and business practices.
• Participate in troubleshooting data-related issues, working to solve challenges and data inconsistencies.
• Create visually compelling and user-friendly data visualizations, dashboards, and reports to effectively communicate findings to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Ensure the integrity, accuracy, and reliability of data through rigorous data cleaning, validation, and preprocessing procedures.
• Work with the project team to prioritize and translate Client requirements and define current and future operational scenarios (processes, models, use cases, plans, and solutions). Work collaboratively with the Client and the Architect to ensure proper translation of business requirements to solution requirements.
• Present analytical findings and recommendations clearly and concisely, demonstrating the value of data-driven decision-making to clients.

Consulting Skills

• Advocates business process transformation by analyzing application portfolios across the ecosystem to identify process optimization and automation opportunities, leveraging planning, project management, and Agile methodologies to drive effective solutions.
• Demonstrates strong communication, problem-solving, adaptability, and teamwork skills, with a collaborative mindset, curiosity to learn, and the ability to clearly articulate ideas, ask insightful questions, and recommend solutions.

Preferred Education

Bachelor's Degree

Required Technical And Professional Expertise

• Ability to incorporate a variety of statistical and machine learning techniques.
• Basic understanding of Cloud (AWS,Azure,etc).
• Ability to use programming languages like Java, Python, Scala, etc., to build pipelines to extract and transform data from a repository to a data consumer.
• Ability to use Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) tools and/or data integration, or federation tools to prepare and transform data as needed.
• Ability to use leading edge tools such as Linux, SQL, Python, Spark,Hadoopand Java.
• Exposure to ETL/ELT projects, data warehouse design, analytics pipelines, capstone data engineering
• Willingness to travel up to 100%, based on project requirements.

Preferred Technical And Professional Experience

• Preferred Bachelor’s degree in a related field (Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Math, MIS, Engineering).
• Preferred Skills/Tech: SQL, Python,dbt, Snowflake, BigQuery, Airflow, data modeling, CI/CD basics.
• Preferred Certifications: SnowProCore, Databricks Data Engineer Associate, Google Associate Cloud Engineer or Data Engineer coursework.
• General skills: GenAI literacy - prompt engineering, RAG, fine-tuning, and evaluation of generative models.