Staff Data Engineer

慨正橡扯; New York (NY); On-site; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Paid parental leave

Flexible PTO

401(k) retirement plan

Commuter benefits

Job summary

Twenty in New York is seeking a Data Engineer to own the infrastructure for cyber operations applications. You'll build a high-performance data lake and collaborate with engineers, overseeing the development of ETL pipelines to handle high-volume datasets efficiently.

Your role will require leadership to mentor engineers, ensure data reliability, and drive key technical initiatives. A focus on national security outcomes is essential.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in data engineering and/or data architecture.
• Mastery-level expertise in building ETL pipelines in production.
• Deep experience with data lake architecture.
• Strong schema and index design skills.
• Experience with column-oriented databases in production.
• Experience building data systems from scratch.
• Proven leadership experience.

Responsibilities

• Lead the development of a data lake for cyber operations.
• Design schemas and indexes for complex datasets.
• Partner with teams to define query patterns for mission use.
• Build observable and resilient ETL pipelines.
• Establish best practices for data quality.
• Mentor engineers on data modeling.

Skills

Data modeling

Schema and index design

ETL pipeline development

Data quality and lineage

Collaboration

Tools

Apache Iceberg

Delta Lake

Apache Hive

Trino

Apache Spark

Job description

About the Company

At Twenty, we're taking on one of the most critical challenges of our time: defending democracies in the digital age. We develop revolutionary technologies that operate at the intersection of the cyber and electromagnetic domains, where the speed of operations exceeds human sensing and complexity transcends conventional boundaries. Our team doesn't just solve problems – we deliver game‑changing outcomes that directly impact national security. We're pragmatic optimists who understand that while our mission of protecting America and its allies is challenging, success is possible.

Role Summary

You will own the data infrastructure that powers Twenty’s cyber operations applications and capabilities. This role is about building a durable, high-performance data lake and the pipelines, schemas, and query patterns that make petabyte‑scale datasets usable and economical. You’ll partner closely with engineers and intelligence analysts to turn messy, high‑volume operational data into reliable, well‑modeled systems that drive real missions. You’ll also lead technical initiatives and mentor other engineers as we scale what we can support and ship.

Who You Are

• You think in systems: data modeling, storage formats, compute engines, and access patterns all have to fit together.
• You’re opinionated about schema and index design, and you can explain tradeoffs clearly.
• You default to measurable reliability: data quality, lineage, repeatability, and operational excellence.
• You’re comfortable working with ambiguous datasets and evolving requirements without lowering standards.
• You collaborate tightly across roles, especially with engineers and analysts who need fast, correct answers.
• You take leadership seriously—mentoring others, raising the bar, and driving initiatives to completion.
• You’re motivated by national security outcomes and want your work to matter in the real world.

What You’ll Do

• Lead the development and operation of a data lake for cyber operations and intelligence data.
• Design schemas, partitions, and indexes that make complex datasets performant and cost‑effective to query.
• Partner with engineers and intelligence analysts to define query patterns and data products for mission use cases.
• Build and evolve ETL pipelines that are observable, recoverable, and resilient to upstream change.
• Drive technical initiatives end‑to‑end, from architecture decisions through production rollout and iteration.
• Establish best practices for data quality, documentation, and operational ownership across the platform.
• Mentor engineers on data modeling, performance tuning, and production‑grade pipeline design.
• Identify bottlenecks in storage/compute/query layers and ship improvements with clear performance wins.

Must Have

• You have 8+ years of experience in data engineering and/or data architecture.
• You have mastery‑level expertise building ETL pipelines and operating them in production.
• You have deep experience with data lake architecture and systems used to query data lakes.
• You have strong schema and index design skills, including partitioning, indexing, and clustering strategies.
• You have experience with column‑oriented databases in production environments.
• You have built data systems from scratch (not only maintained existing platforms).
• You have proven leadership experience mentoring engineers and driving technical initiatives.
• You are a U.S. citizen and can meet the role’s security requirements.

Nice To Have

• You have experience with key‑value datastores.
• You have worked with streaming and message queue systems.
• You have experience with graph database technologies.
• You have worked with internet/networking datasets (e.g., scan data, DNS, netflow, certificates).
• You have experience supporting analysts or operational users with high‑stakes data needs.

Tech Environment (You Might Work With)

• Data lakes: Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, Apache Hive
• Query engines: Trino, Presto, AWS Athena, Apache Spark
• Column stores: ClickHouse, Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery
• ETL / orchestration: Airflow, AWS Glue, NiFi, ClickPipe
• Streaming / queues: Kafka, RabbitMQ, NATS, AWS Kinesis
• Graph: Neo4j, AWS Neptune, Memgraph, Apache AGE

Benefits
What's on the table:

• Health. Medical, dental, and vision plan options. Life / AD&D, disability coverage options.
• Family. Paid parental leave for eligible full‑time employees. 12 weeks for birthing parents, 4 for non‑birthing parents, 6 weeks for adoptive, foster, or intended parents through surrogacy.
• Vacation. Paid holidays and flexible PTO. Take what you need.
• Retirement. 401(k) with pre‑tax and Roth options. HSA/FSA options, dependent care FSA.
• At the office. Commuter benefits. On‑site garage parking. Bike storage. Building fitness center. Desk setup stipend.

Benefits vary by location, role, and eligibility. Full plan details provided during the interview and offer process.

Some positions may require eligibility to obtain a U.S. Government security clearance. Any clearance requirement will be listed in the role description.

Twenty is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, veteran status, disability, or any other protected status.

If you need a reasonable accommodation during the hiring process, let us know and we will work with you.