Remote GenAI Data Engineer - Data Pipelines & Governance

Nelnet; Hartford (CT); Hybrid; USD 115,000 - 135,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision

HSA and FSA

401K/student loan repayment

Life insurance & AD&D

Wellness program

Tuition reimbursement

Employee stock purchase program

Job summary

Nelnet is seeking a Data Pipeline Engineer to design, build, and maintain data pipelines on Google Cloud for GenAI use cases. You will classify data for FERPA compliance, enforce access controls, and collaborate across GCP/Gemini teams to ensure data readiness and reliable delivery.

You will work in a hybrid remote/onsite role with a standard in-office requirement and a strong emphasis on data governance, ELT/ETL, and secure AI-enabled data processing.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience building data pipelines and ELT/ETL for analytics or GenAI on a major cloud data platform.
• Experience with data governance and classification tooling (Dataplex, DLP) or equivalents.
• Strong SQL skills and Python for pipeline development and data transformation.
• Knowledge of FERPA and education/public sector data privacy considerations.
• Experience partnering with client or partner technical teams to extract data from legacy or third-party systems.
• Ability to translate technical requirements into working data pipelines from a scoped backlog.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain data pipelines using BigQuery and Dataflow for GenAI use cases.
• Build ELT/ETL processes for batch ingestion into Google Cloud analytics and RAG data stores.
• Monitor pipeline reliability, performance, and cost; optimize BigQuery/Dataflow usage.
• Classify data using Dataplex and DLP to identify FERPA-regulated data; enforce data access controls.
• Define governance policies for education/SLED data sensitivity and AI readiness.
• Design data models and schemas to support current and reusable patterns.
• Document data flows, schemas, and classification decisions for reuse and audits.
• Collaborate with GCP/Gemini and Engineer teams to ensure data readiness for AI use cases.

Skills

Strong SQL skills

Python for data pipelines

Analytical thinking

Effective communication

Problem-solving

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience

Tools

BigQuery

Dataflow

Cloud Composer/Apache Airflow

Dataplex

Cloud DLP

Collibra/Alation

Google Cloud IAM

Job description

Nelnet is seeking a Data Pipeline Engineer to design, build, and maintain data pipelines on Google Cloud for GenAI use cases. You will classify data for FERPA compliance, enforce access controls, and collaborate across GCP/Gemini teams to ensure data readiness and reliable delivery.

You will work in a hybrid remote/onsite role with a standard in-office requirement and a strong emphasis on data governance, ELT/ETL, and secure AI-enabled data processing.