Principal, Data Engineer

American Tower; Massachusetts; On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

American Tower, a premier data and analytics hub, seeks a Principal Data Engineer to design and evolve the enterprise data platform. You will lead complex solution design, enforce governance, and set engineering standards across global teams for analytics, AI, and data products.

You will mentor engineers, collaborate with IT, security, and analytics partners, and drive scalable pipelines using cloud-native technologies.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, or related field.
• Master's degree preferred.
• At least 8 years in data engineering with 5+ years in senior/principal role.
• Expert SQL and Python, large-scale processing with Spark/PySpark.
• Strong cloud experience (AWS/Azure/GCP) and data platforms (Databricks/Snowflake).
• Experience with streaming tech (Kafka/Kinesis), and orchestration (Airflow).
• Data modeling across warehouse, lakehouse, and streaming architectures.
• Governance: data quality, lineage, metadata, access control, privacy.

Responsibilities

• Design and evolve enterprise data platform for analytics, AI, and data products.
• Lead complex solution design and governance enforcement through technical controls.
• Set engineering standards and mentor engineers across teams.
• Collaborate with decentralized analytics teams to accelerate value delivery.
• Lead design reviews and incident responses with cross-functional partners.

Skills

SQL

Python

Spark/PySpark

Cloud platforms

Data modeling

CI/CD

Data governance

Airflow

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Stats/Math

Master's degree preferred

Tools

Databricks

Snowflake

Apache Kafka

Kinesis

Apache Airflow

Job description

The Team

We are seeking a Principal Data Engineer to join American Tower's Information Technology organization's Data & Analytics team. The team architects, builds, and optimizes cloud-native data foundations that enable analytics, artificial intelligence ("AI"), and enterprise-scale data products.

Day to day you will design and evolve the enterprise data platform, lead complex solution design, and embed governance enforcement through technical controls. As a Principal Data Engineer, you will set engineering standards, mentor engineers, and collaborate extensively with decentralized analytics teams across the Global Operations, Finance, and Sales departments to accelerate value delivery.

What You Need to Succeed

• Bachelor's degree required, with a concentration in Computer Science, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, or a related quantitative field preferred.
• Master's degree in a related field preferred.
• A minimum of 8 years of data engineering or data platform development experience with at least 5 years as a senior or principal-level technical leader required.
• Expert-level proficiency in Structured Query Language, Python programming language, and large-scale processing with Apache Spark or PySpark.
• Deep experience with major cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform, and with modern data platforms such as Databricks or Snowflake.
• Strong understanding of streaming technologies such as Apache Kafka or Amazon Kinesis, orchestration tools such as Apache Airflow, and transformation frameworks such as Data Build Tool.
• Mastery of data modeling, semantic modeling, and performance tuning across data warehouse, lakehouse, and streaming architectures.
• Ability to implement technical governance (data quality, lineage, metadata, access management, and privacy controls) and establish engineering standards (CI/CD, infrastructure as code, and automated testing).
• Ability to lead complex technical design, influence without authority, and mentor engineers to raise the technical bar.
• Strong written and oral communication skills, including the ability to present ideas and suggestions clearly and effectively.
• Ability to work with different functional groups and levels of employees to effectively and professionally achieve results.
• Strong organizational skills; ability to accomplish multiple tasks within the agreed-upon timeframes through effective prioritization of duties and functions in a fast-paced environment.

What You Can Offer Us

• Architect and evolve the enterprise data platform including ingestion, transformation, storage, orchestration, and serving layers for batch and streaming use cases.
• Design and implement end-to-end data pipelines, reusable frameworks, and enterprise data models (dimensional, data vault, domain-oriented) to power analytics, AI, and operational use cases.
• Define and operationalize the semantic data layer and embed governance enforcement through technical controls (data quality, validation, lineage, metadata, access).
• Establish engineering standards for coding, testing, version control, documentation, and continuous integration/continuous delivery ("CI/CD"); optimize cost, performance, and scalability using FinOps principles.
• Lead design reviews, root cause analyses, and incident responses; partner with the Data Science team to productionize models and enable real-time/batch inference.
• Collaborate with Data Products, IT, security, and architecture teams to deliver secure, resilient, and compliant data products with strong service level agreements.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, guide build-versus-buy decisions, and mentor engineers through code reviews, technical talks, and best practices.
• Engage decentralized analytics teams to share standards and reusable components while avoiding duplication of efforts.
• Other duties as assigned.

American Tower is a global digital infrastructure company serving customers through tower sites and other real estate solutions that support connectivity and opportunity, focused on achieving our vision of Building a More Connected World. Our success is rooted in the potential of our people and the power of local teams at our offices and sites across 25 countries.

We are one of the largest global Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and a publicly traded (NYSE:AMT), Fortune 500 Company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. The next decade will be an exciting time as we evolve our infrastructure to meet tomorrow's needs and position our people to elevate their impact, their potential, and our shared success. Come grow your career with us!

For more information about how American Tower is building a more connected world, visit americantower.com

American Tower is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and will not discriminate against an applicant or employee based on age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, race, color, creed, religion, na