GenAI Data Engineer - Remote & Data Governance

Nelnet; Tallahassee (FL); Remote; USD 115,000 - 135,000; Full time

Job summary

Nelnet is seeking a Data Pipeline Engineer to design and operate data pipelines using BigQuery and Dataflow for GenAI-enabled higher education and public sector solutions. You will classify sensitive data, enforce access controls, and partner across teams to ensure scalable, auditable data flows.

Ideal candidates will have strong SQL and Python skills, experience with ELT/ETL on cloud platforms, and familiarity with FERPA compliance.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in related field or equivalent work experience.
• Hands-on experience building data pipelines and ELT/ETL for analytics or GenAI on major cloud platform.
• Strong SQL and Python for pipeline development and data transformation.
• Experience with data governance and classification tooling (Dataplex, DLP) and sensitive data handling (FERPA).
• Knowledge of cloud storage, messaging, and access-control concepts (GCS/S3, Pub/Sub, IAM).
• Nice-to-have Google Cloud Data Engineer certification.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain data pipelines using BigQuery and Dataflow for GenAI use cases.
• Develop ELT/ETL processes for batch data ingestion into analytics stores.
• Monitor pipeline reliability, optimize costs and performance.
• Classify and tag data to identify sensitive data and enforce access controls.
• Collaborate with engineers to ensure data structures support AI solutions.
• Document data flows, schemas and classification decisions for audits.
• Translate requirements from engineers into working data pipelines.

Skills

SQL

Python

Data governance

FERPA

BigQuery

Dataflow

Airflow

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent

Tools

BigQuery

Dataflow

Cloud Composer/Airflow

Dataplex

DLP

Job description

Nelnet is seeking a Data Pipeline Engineer to design and operate data pipelines using BigQuery and Dataflow for GenAI-enabled higher education and public sector solutions. You will classify sensitive data, enforce access controls, and partner across teams to ensure scalable, auditable data flows.

Ideal candidates will have strong SQL and Python skills, experience with ELT/ETL on cloud platforms, and familiarity with FERPA compliance.