Remote Data Engineer: GenAI Data Pipelines

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

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, vision benefits

HSA/FSA programs

401K and student loan repayment

Job summary

Nelnet is seeking a Data Pipeline Engineer to design, build, and manage data pipelines on Google Cloud for GenAI use cases in higher education. You will implement ELT/ETL processes, ensure data quality, and enforce governance and access controls across client data.

The role emphasizes collaboration with GCP/Gemini engineers, regulatory compliance with FERPA, and the ability to translate complex requirements into scalable data solutions.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience building data pipelines and ELT/ETL processes for analytics or GenAI use cases on a major cloud data platform.
• Direct experience with BigQuery and Dataflow (or Cloud Composer/Apache Airflow) strongly preferred.
• Experience with data governance and classification tooling (Dataplex and DLP); Google Cloud preferred.
• Working knowledge of cloud storage, messaging, and access-control concepts (IAM).
• Google Cloud certification preferred (Professional Data Engineer).
• Strong SQL skills and Python for pipeline development and data transformation.
• Familiarity with data privacy and compliance considerations (FERPA).
• Experience partnering with client teams to extract and integrate data from SIS, ERP, casework systems.
• Ability to translate technical requirements into working data pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain data pipelines using BigQuery and Dataflow to ingest, transform, and serve client data for GenAI use cases.
• Build and maintain ELT/ETL processes for batch ingestion of client source system data into Google Cloud analytics and RAG data stores.
• Monitor pipeline reliability, performance, and cost, optimizing BigQuery usage and Dataflow jobs as engagements scale.
• Classify and tag client data using Dataplex and Cloud DLP to identify sensitive and regulated data, prior to AI use.
• Define and enforce data access controls and governance policies for higher education and SLED data sensitivity.
• Assess and document data readiness for AI use cases, flagging gaps in quality, completeness, or governance.
• Design data models and schemas that support current and reusable data patterns across engagements.
• Partner with client technical teams to understand source system constraints and negotiate data access.
• Maintain technical documentation of data flows, schemas, and classification decisions.
• Execute delivery backlog and provide technical estimates; flag data-related risks.
• Collaborate with GCP/Gemini Enterprise Engineer and AgentOps on data structure, access, and infrastructure.
• Conduct data quality reviews to maintain reliability standards across the practice.

Skills

SQL

Python

BigQuery

Dataflow

Airflow

Dataplex

DLP

FERPA

GCP

Governance

Education

Bachelor’s degree

Tools

BigQuery

Dataflow

Cloud Composer/Airflow

Dataplex

DLP

Job description

Nelnet is seeking a Data Pipeline Engineer to design, build, and manage data pipelines on Google Cloud for GenAI use cases in higher education. You will implement ELT/ETL processes, ensure data quality, and enforce governance and access controls across client data.

The role emphasizes collaboration with GCP/Gemini engineers, regulatory compliance with FERPA, and the ability to translate complex requirements into scalable data solutions.