Principal Data Engineer, Enterprise Architect (IC)

Abbott Laboratories; Madison (WI); On-site; USD 129,000 - 259,000; Full time

Job summary

Abbott Laboratories seeks a Principal Data Engineer (IC) to lead cross-domain data initiatives and shape enterprise data engineering standards. The role blends hands-on prototyping with architecture leadership, guiding complex data platforms built on Databricks and Unity Catalog.

You will influence across teams, manage technical debt, and drive scalable, secure data solutions for analytics and AI. Based in Madison, WI, this senior individual contributor role requires deep expertise in data

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Information Systems, Mathematics, or Engineering.
• Expert-level experience with software development design and development and with relevant domain specific skills.
• Spark on Databricks or comparable platforms; Python, Scala, SQL, and Snowflake experience.
• ETL and ELT data pipelines, including batch and event-driven patterns.
• Designing and implementing data modeling solutions using relational, dimensional, and/or NoSQL databases.
• Database architecture testing methodology, including execution of test plans, debugging, and testing scripts and tools.
• Open data file and table formats (Parquet, Avro, Delta Lake); cloud infrastructure and delivery services (AWS, S3, SQS, and GitLab CI/CD).
• REST API development; familiarity with BI concepts and Tableau performance considerations.
• Agile development tools; including, but not limited to, JIRA, Confluence repository.
• Demonstrated ability to lead through influence across multiple teams and communicate complex technical decisions to senior engineering, business, and executive stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Cross-domain technical leadership and delivery Own the technical outcome of assigned cross-domain initiatives from initial ambiguity through production and lifecycle support.
• Coordinate technical execution across domain Staff Engineers and partner teams, identifying dependencies and architectural risks, and escalating decisions requiring business or delivery authority.
• Remain hands-on through prototypes, reference implementations, critical-path development, technical validation, and production problem solving.
• Define, steward, and evolve enterprise data engineering standards, patterns, and reference architectures, and drive convergence where inconsistent or duplicative implementations create enterprise cost, risk, or operational burden.
• Lead architecture for assigned enterprise capabilities, including semantic and metrics layers, canonical data models, batch, API, event-driven, and streaming patterns, and governed data products supporting analytics, machine learning, and AI.
• Establish enterprise data-contract standards covering schemas, service expectations, compatibility, breaking-change policy, and producer-consumer responsibilities, and partner with Platform Engineering to convert recurring cross-domain needs into shared capabilities.
• Lead enterprise design and code reviews for high-complexity or cross-domain work, and coach and mentor Staff and Senior Engineers across domains without formal people authority.
• Communicate architecture and technical tradeoffs clearly to engineering, business, and executive stakeholders, and build reusable guidance that increases engineering consistency across Enterprise Data.
• Evaluate architecture tradeoffs across reliability, scalability, performance, security, privacy, operability, adoption, and technical cost, and drive cost-efficient use of compute, storage, streaming, and orchestration.
• Serve as the enterprise technical escalation for incidents involving multiple domains or shared architecture patterns, and lead root-cause analysis and preventive changes for recurring enterprise issues.

Skills

Spark on Databricks

Python

Scala

SQL

Snowflake

ETL pipelines

Data modeling

REST APIs

AWS

CI/CD

JIRA

Confluence

Databricks

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Information Systems, Mathematics, or Engineering

Tools

Unity Catalog

Delta Lake

Kafka

Job description

Abbott Laboratories seeks a Principal Data Engineer (IC) to lead cross-domain data initiatives and shape enterprise data engineering standards. The role blends hands-on prototyping with architecture leadership, guiding complex data platforms built on Databricks and Unity Catalog.

You will influence across teams, manage technical debt, and drive scalable, secure data solutions for analytics and AI. Based in Madison, WI, this senior individual contributor role requires deep expertise in data