GenAI Data Engineer - Cloud Pipelines & Governance

Nelnet; North Platte (NE); Hybrid; USD 115,000 - 135,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision

401K with matching

Life insurance & AD&D

Tuition reimbursement

Employee stock purchase plan

Job summary

Nelnet is seeking a Data Pipeline Engineer to design, build, and maintain data pipelines on Google Cloud for GenAI use cases across higher education and public sector clients. You will implement ELT/ETL workflows from source systems, ensure data governance, and manage data readiness for AI solutions with a focus on FERPA compliance and secure access controls.

The role requires hands-on experience with BigQuery, Dataflow, and Airflow/Cloud Composer, plus strong SQL and Python.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience building data pipelines and ELT/ETL processes for analytics or GenAI on a major cloud data platform.
• Experience with data governance and classification tooling (Dataplex, DLP, or equivalent).
• Knowledge of cloud storage, messaging, and access-control concepts (IAM, Pub/Sub).
• Google Cloud certification preferred (Professional Data Engineer).
• Strong SQL and Python for pipeline development and data transformation.
• Familiarity with FERPA and education/public sector data privacy considerations.
• Experience partnering with client or partner technical teams to extract and integrate data from legacy or third-party systems.
• Ability to translate technical requirements into data pipelines from a scoped backlog.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain data pipelines using BigQuery and Dataflow for GenAI use cases.
• Develop ELT/ETL processes for batch ingestion from SIS, ERP, and casework systems into Google Cloud analytics and RAG data stores.
• Monitor pipeline reliability, performance, and cost; optimize BigQuery usage and Dataflow jobs.
• Classify and tag client data using Dataplex and DLP to identify sensitive data prior to AI use.
• Define and enforce data access controls and governance policies for higher education and SLED data.
• Assess and document data readiness for AI use cases, flag gaps in quality or governance.
• Design data models and schemas, partner with client teams to understand constraints, maintain documentation for audits.
• Execute against delivery backlog, provide estimates, flag data-related risks, and ensure alignment with Gemini Engineer requirements.
• Collaborate with GCP/Gemini Enterprise Engineer and AgentOps for data structure, access, and environment management.
• Conduct data quality reviews and testing to maintain reliability standards.

Skills

SQL

Python

Education

Bachelor’s degree in related field or equivalent work experience

Tools

BigQuery

Dataflow

Cloud Composer

Airflow

Dataplex

DLP

Google Cloud

Job description

Nelnet is seeking a Data Pipeline Engineer to design, build, and maintain data pipelines on Google Cloud for GenAI use cases across higher education and public sector clients. You will implement ELT/ETL workflows from source systems, ensure data governance, and manage data readiness for AI solutions with a focus on FERPA compliance and secure access controls.

The role requires hands-on experience with BigQuery, Dataflow, and Airflow/Cloud Composer, plus strong SQL and Python.