Data Engineer: Scientific Data & Lab Automation

NC State University; Raleigh (NC); On-site; USD 70,000 - 80,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental, and Vision

Retirement Programs

Paid Time Off

12 Holidays Each Year

Tuition assistance

Wellness programs

Job summary

NC State University in Raleigh, NC is seeking a Data Engineer to build and maintain data infrastructure for the SPEED facility, connecting instruments, automation, AI, and research data systems.

The ideal candidate has a BS in CS or related field and strong Python/SQL skills, ETL pipelines, and database design. This full-time role offers a collaborative environment and opportunities to work with academic, government, and industry partners.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, data science, engineering, IT, or related field.

Responsibilities

• Build data ingestion, transformation, and processing pipelines.
• Design schemas for samples, experiments, metadata, provenance, and instrument outputs.
• Maintain databases, object/time-series storage, indexing, and data-access services.
• Implement automated data-quality, validation, unit, completeness, and provenance checks.
• Integrate data systems with laboratory automation, software, AI, and user workflows.
• Manage access controls, monitoring, backup/recovery, documentation, and user support.
• Develop data dictionaries, API specifications, and schema documentation.
• Support FAIR data practices and persistent identifiers.
• Assist users with data access, export, and troubleshooting.
• Evaluate new databases, storage technologies, and interoperability standards.
• Participate in technical reviews, platform commissioning, and sponsor demonstrations.

Skills

Python

SQL

ETL/ELT pipelines

APIs

Data modeling

Schema design

Relational databases

Document databases

Git

Linux

Testing

Monitoring

Documentation

Data quality

Provenance

Access control

Backup/recovery

Collaboration

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

MongoDB

PostgreSQL

Cloud platforms

Kubernetes

Job description

NC State University in Raleigh, NC is seeking a Data Engineer to build and maintain data infrastructure for the SPEED facility, connecting instruments, automation, AI, and research data systems.

The ideal candidate has a BS in CS or related field and strong Python/SQL skills, ETL pipelines, and database design. This full-time role offers a collaborative environment and opportunities to work with academic, government, and industry partners.