Senior Data Engineer - Active Secret Clearance

Jobtailor; United States; On-site; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Jobtailor is seeking a data engineering professional to own end-to-end data ingestion, cleaning, and quality processes, leveraging Python, BigQuery, Cloud Storage, and Vertex AI/RAG. You will design embeddings, vector search, and metadata-driven retrieval while mentoring teammates and ensuring DoD compliance.

Ideal candidates have 3+ years of engineer experience, hold an active Secret clearance, and are comfortable working in the Washington, DC area.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of relevant technical or engineering experience.
• Hands-on experience with Python, BigQuery, Cloud Storage, Vertex AI/RAG, embeddings, vector search, SQL, data quality, IAM, and evaluation.
• Active Secret clearance required
• TS/SCI eligibility preferred
• Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer or Professional Machine Learning Engineer preferred
• Experience taking AI use cases from discovery through adoption measurement preferred
• Washington, DC / Northern Virginia area preferred

Responsibilities

• Own ingestion, cleaning, chunking, embeddings, metadata, retrieval, citations, access filtering, and data quality
• Implement solutions using Python, BigQuery, Cloud Storage, Vertex AI/RAG, embeddings, and vector search
• Mentor team members and contribute reusable standards
• Support RMF/FedRAMP/DoD authorization activities
• Build the knowledge pipeline that gives Gemini grounded, traceable, and permission-aware answers for mission-critical applications

Skills

Python

Embeddings

Vector search

SQL

Data quality

IAM

Evaluation

BigQuery

Education

Active Secret Clearance

Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer

Google Cloud Professional Machine Learning Engineer

Tools

Google Cloud Platform

Vertex AI

BigQuery

Cloud Storage

RAG

Embeddings

Job description

• Own ingestion, cleaning, chunking, embeddings, metadata, retrieval, citations, access filtering, and data quality


• Implement solutions using Python, BigQuery, Cloud Storage, Vertex AI/RAG, embeddings, and vector search


• Mentor team members and contribute reusable standards


• Support RMF/FedRAMP/DoD authorization activities


• Build the knowledge pipeline that gives Gemini grounded, traceable, and permission-aware answers for mission-critical applications

Requirements

• 3+ years of relevant technical or engineering experience


• Hands-on experience with Python, BigQuery, Cloud Storage, Vertex AI/RAG, embeddings, vector search, SQL, data quality, IAM, and evaluation


• Active Secret clearance required


• TS/SCI eligibility preferred


• Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer or Professional Machine Learning Engineer preferred


• Experience taking AI use cases from discovery through adoption measurement preferred


• Washington, DC / Northern Virginia area preferred

Core Competencies

Demonstrates expertise in data ingestion, cleaning, and quality assurance using Python and Google Cloud technologies. Capable of mentoring team members while supporting compliance with RMF/FedRAMP/DoD standards.

Highest-signal resume keywords

• Python Programming


• BigQuery


• Cloud Storage


• Vertex AI/RAG


• Data Quality

Hard Skills

• Data Ingestion


• Data Cleaning


• Embeddings


• Vector Search


• SQL


• IAM


• Evaluation

Soft Skills

• Mentoring


• Collaboration

Certifications & Qualifications

• Active Secret Clearance


• Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer


• Google Cloud Professional Machine Learning Engineer

Industry Keywords

• RMF


• FedRAMP


• DoD Authorization


• AI Use Cases


• Washington, DC Area

Tools & Technologies

• Google Cloud


• Cloud Storage


• BigQuery


• Vertex AI