Senior Data Engineer

ZipStaff Inc.; Jersey City (NJ); On-site; USD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

On-site work

Contract through ZipStaff (W2)

Job summary

ZipStaff Inc. is seeking a Senior Data Engineer to design, build, and operate enterprise data pipelines for a healthcare analytics client in Jersey City, NJ.

You will own Airflow DAG development, dbt Core modeling, and Kubernetes/OpenShift deployment for high-concurrency workloads in production. This contract (W2 through ZipStaff) requires 10+ years of data engineering experience, expert Airflow and dbt Core skills, and strong Python and SQL capabilities.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in data engineering, analytics engineering, or data platform engineering.
• Expert-level Airflow design, scheduling, and performance tuning.
• Expert-level dbt Core modeling, testing, macros, and production deployment.
• Strong Python for data engineering and automation.
• Production Kubernetes/OpenShift for data workloads.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain complex Airflow DAGs (batch and event-driven).
• Tune DAG performance, dependencies, retries, SLAs, and alerting.
• Optimize Airflow scheduler, executor, and workers for high-concurrency workloads.
• Lead dbt Core implementation: project structure, environments, and CI/CD.
• Design staging/intermediate/mart models, tests, docs, macros, and incremental models.
• Optimize dbt/SQL performance for large datasets and downstream reporting.
• Deploy and run data workloads on Kubernetes/OpenShift; set resource limits and autoscaling.
• Troubleshoot container performance and resource contention; monitor end-to-end pipeline health.

Skills

Airflow expertise

Python

SQL

Cloud data platforms

CI/CD

Git

On-site Jersey City

US work authorization

Tools

Airflow

dbt Core

Kubernetes/OpenShift

Job description

Job Title: Senior Data Engineer.

Location: Jersey City, NJ (On-site).

Employment Type: Contract (W2 through ZipStaff — No C2C or 1099).

About the Opportunity

ZipStaff is seeking a Senior Data Engineer to build and operate enterprise data pipelines for a leading healthcare analytics organization supporting financial and accounting platforms.

This role requires expert-level Apache Airflow, dbt Core, and production Kubernetes / OpenShift. General ETL or warehouse-only engineers without orchestration and container depth will not be a fit.

What You’ll Do:

• Design, build, and maintain complex Airflow DAGs (batch and event-driven).
• Tune DAG performance, dependencies, retries, SLAs, and alerting.
• Optimize Airflow scheduler, executor, and workers for high-concurrency workloads.
• Lead dbt Core implementation: project structure, environments, and CI/CD.
• Design staging / intermediate / mart models, tests, docs, macros, and incremental models.
• Optimize dbt/SQL performance for large datasets and downstream reporting.
• Deploy and run data workloads on Kubernetes / OpenShift.
• Set CPU/memory requests and limits, autoscaling, and pod scheduling.
• Troubleshoot container performance and resource contention.
• Monitor end-to-end pipeline health; add logs, metrics, and alerts.
• Partner with architects, platform engineers, and business stakeholders.
• Support financial reporting, accounting, and regulated data use cases.
• Enforce data-engineering standards, security, and governance.

Required Qualifications:

• 10+ years in data engineering, analytics engineering, or data platform engineering.
• Expert-level Apache Airflow (DAG design, scheduling, performance tuning).
• Expert-level dbt Core (modeling, testing, macros, production implementation).
• Strong Python for data engineering and automation.
• Production Kubernetes and/or OpenShift for data workloads.
• Strong SQL for complex transformations.
• Experience with distributed workload management and performance tuning.
• Cloud data platforms, containerized deploys, CI/CD, and Git.
• Ability to work on-site in Jersey City, NJ.
• Must be legally authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship now or in the future.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Financial services or accounting data platforms.
• Enterprise migrations from legacy systems to a modern data stack.
• Data warehouse experience, including Oracle.

About ZipStaff

ZipStaff partners with leading organizations to connect skilled technology professionals with high-impact contract opportunities. We focus on quality matches and long-term success.