Remote Data Engineer – GenAI Data Pipelines & Governance

Nelnet; Little Rock (AR); Hybrid; USD 115,000 - 135,000; Full time

Job summary

Nelnet is seeking a Data Pipeline Engineer to design, build, and maintain robust data pipelines on Google Cloud for GenAI use cases. You will classify data for FERPA-sensitive information and enforce governance policies while optimizing pipeline performance.

The role requires hands-on ELT/ETL experience, strong SQL and Python skills, and collaboration with cross-functional teams to deliver secure, reusable data assets in a hybrid work environment.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience building data pipelines and ELT/ETL on major cloud data platforms.
• Experience with data governance and classification tooling for identifying and managing sensitive or regulated data (e.g., Dataplex, DLP).
• Strong SQL and Python for pipeline development and data transformation.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain data pipelines using BigQuery and Dataflow.
• Ingest, transform, and serve client data for GenAI use cases.
• Monitor pipeline reliability, performance, and cost.
• Classify and tag client data with Dataplex and DLP.
• Define data access controls and governance policies.
• Design data models and schemas for current and repeatable patterns.
• Collaborate with clients and internal teams on data extraction.

Skills

SQL development

Python for pipelines

Data governance

Data privacy compliance

Data modeling

ELT/ETL pipelines

Education

Bachelor’s degree in related field

Tools

BigQuery

Dataflow

Cloud Composer/Apache Airflow

Dataplex

Cloud DLP

Job description

Nelnet is seeking a Data Pipeline Engineer to design, build, and maintain robust data pipelines on Google Cloud for GenAI use cases. You will classify data for FERPA-sensitive information and enforce governance policies while optimizing pipeline performance.

The role requires hands-on ELT/ETL experience, strong SQL and Python skills, and collaboration with cross-functional teams to deliver secure, reusable data assets in a hybrid work environment.