GenAI Data Engineer - Remote with BigQuery

Nelnet; Des Moines (IA); Hybrid; USD 115,000 - 135,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work environment

Benefits package including medical, 17

Wellness program

Job summary

Nelnet is seeking a Data Pipeline Engineer to design, build, and maintain data pipelines on Google Cloud for GenAI use cases in higher education and SLED clients. You will transform source data into reliable, accessible data stores while enforcing governance and FERPA compliance.

This role partners with GCP/Gemini engineers and the Forward Deployed Engineer to ensure data readiness and privacy. Strong SQL, Python, and ELT/ETL experience are required, with hands-on BigQuery/Dataflow expertise.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience building data pipelines for analytics or GenAI on a major cloud data platform.
• Strong SQL and Python for pipeline development and data transformation.
• Experience with data governance and classification tooling for sensitive data.
• Familiarity with FERPA-related data handling and education sector data.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain data pipelines using BigQuery and Dataflow for GenAI use cases.
• Ingest, transform, and serve client data via ELT/ETL processes into analytics stores.
• Monitor pipeline reliability, performance, cost, and optimize resources.
• Classify data with Dataplex and DLP; enforce data access controls and governance.
• Collaborate with GCP/Gemini and AgentOps teams to ensure data readiness for AI solutions.

Skills

SQL development

Python for pipelines

Data governance

BigQuery

Dataflow / Cloud Composer

JIRA / TFS

Cloud storage concepts

Google Cloud certification

ETL/ELT design

Education

Bachelor’s degree in related field

Tools

BigQuery

Dataflow

Cloud Composer/Apache Airflow

Dataplex

DLP (Data Loss Prevention)

Collibra/Alation

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) tools

SQL tooling

Job description

Nelnet is seeking a Data Pipeline Engineer to design, build, and maintain data pipelines on Google Cloud for GenAI use cases in higher education and SLED clients. You will transform source data into reliable, accessible data stores while enforcing governance and FERPA compliance.

This role partners with GCP/Gemini engineers and the Forward Deployed Engineer to ensure data readiness and privacy. Strong SQL, Python, and ELT/ETL experience are required, with hands-on BigQuery/Dataflow expertise.