Senior Data Engineer: Elasticsearch & Graph DB Specialist

Jobtailor; Bethesda (MD); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Jobtailor is seeking a highly skilled Data Engineering Lead in Bethesda to design, build, and optimize scalable data platforms for analytics and AI/ML workloads. You will work with Elasticsearch/OpenSearch and graph databases, ensuring high performance and scalable ingestion in a Kubernetes environment.

The role requires deep data modeling, large-scale ETL/ELT pipelines, and collaboration with cross-functional teams.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, or related field with 12–15 years of experience or Master with 10–13 years.
• Active Top Secret/SCI clearance and ability to obtain a Polygraph.
• Elasticsearch/OpenSearch architecture, index design, mappings, analyzers, and query optimization.
• Graph databases such as JanusGraph, Neo4j, TigerGraph, Neptune, or Memgraph.
• Data modeling for hierarchical and highly connected datasets.
• Large-scale ETL/ELT pipeline development.
• Kubernetes deployment and operations for stateful data services.
• Python or Java for data engineering and automation.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and optimize scalable data management solutions for analytics and AI/ML workloads.
• Build and maintain Elasticsearch and graph-based data platforms for storage, discovery, and analysis of hierarchical data.
• Design and optimize Elasticsearch indices for high-performance search and analytics on large structures.
• Design, implement, and maintain a graph data store for hierarchical graphs with high throughput.
• Develop scalable ingestion pipelines for graph analytics workloads.
• Collaborate with infra and platform teams to deploy Elasticsearch and graph services in Kubernetes with cloud-native tech.
• Partner with data scientists and AI/ML engineers to manage datasets throughout the data lifecycle.
• Develop automated data loading, transformation, validation, and QA pipelines for production analytics.
• Optimize graphs and search infrastructure for high availability and performance at scale.
• Work with software engineers to integrate graph and search services into microservices.

Skills

Python

Java

Data Modeling

ETL/ELT Pipelines

Kubernetes

Distributed Storage

Graph Analytics

Elasticsearch/OpenSearch

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Data Engineering

Master's degree in related field

Tools

Elasticsearch/OpenSearch

JanusGraph/Neo4j/TigerGraph/Amazon Neptune/Memgraph

Kubernetes

Cloud-Native Technologies

Automated Testing Tools

Job description

Jobtailor is seeking a highly skilled Data Engineering Lead in Bethesda to design, build, and optimize scalable data platforms for analytics and AI/ML workloads. You will work with Elasticsearch/OpenSearch and graph databases, ensuring high performance and scalable ingestion in a Kubernetes environment.

The role requires deep data modeling, large-scale ETL/ELT pipelines, and collaboration with cross-functional teams.