Senior Data Engineer & Architecture for ML & Data Science

The Pennsylvania State University; Reston (VA); On-site; USD 146,000 - 319,000; Full time

Job summary

The Pennsylvania State University’s Applied Research Laboratory (ARL) in State College, PA or Reston, VA seeks a Senior Data Engineer to design scalable, high-performance database solutions supporting data science workflows and ML experimentation.

You will lead PostgreSQL schema design, indexing, and query optimization while evaluating NoSQL and time-series options; collaborate with data scientists and engineers to accelerate training and deployment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS, Data Eng, or related field.
• At least 5+ years in data engineering or database architecture.
• Expertise in PostgreSQL with advanced indexing, partitioning, and replication.
• Experience with non-relational databases (MongoDB, Cassandra, Neo4j, Redis, DynamoDB).
• Familiarity with cloud database services (AWS RDS/Aurora, GCP Cloud SQL, Azure Database).
• Proficient in SQL and Python; comfortable with ML data workflows.

Responsibilities

• Design and maintain scalable, high-performance database solutions to support data science workflows and ML experimentation.
• Partner with data scientists to understand data access patterns and develop storage strategies that accelerate analysis and model training.
• Serve as the internal subject matter expert on PostgreSQL—schema design, indexing, partitioning, and query optimization.
• Evaluate and integrate alternative database technologies (e.g., MongoDB, Neo4j, Redis, Cassandra) where they provide clear advantages.
• Lead efforts to optimize data pipelines for both structured and unstructured data used in algorithm development.
• Ensure data integrity, security, and governance across storage systems.
• Implement monitoring, automation, and performance‑tuning tools for all database environments.

Skills

PostgreSQL

Data modeling

SQL

Python

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Data Eng or related field

Tools

MongoDB

Cassandra

Neo4j

Redis

DynamoDB

Job description

The Pennsylvania State University’s Applied Research Laboratory (ARL) in State College, PA or Reston, VA seeks a Senior Data Engineer to design scalable, high-performance database solutions supporting data science workflows and ML experimentation.

You will lead PostgreSQL schema design, indexing, and query optimization while evaluating NoSQL and time-series options; collaborate with data scientists and engineers to accelerate training and deployment.