Staff Data Engineer

Palmetto Clean Technology; United States; Hybrid; USD 170,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Palmetto seeks an experienced data platform professional to own the technical design of the data platform powering Palmetto’s products, partners, and AI agents. You will turn data across the customer journey into a single governed view used by dashboards, notebooks, and agents, while building secure, auditable data access paths.

This high-impact, individual-contributor role requires setting technical direction, writing foundational code, and collaborating with core platform and product teams.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in data engineering, including time at a Staff or lead level owning a platform used by multiple teams.
• Deep experience with SQL and Python.
• Strong database fundamentals in a modern analytical warehouse (Snowflake, BigQuery) and schema design.
• Experience with dbt or adjacent transformation framework (SQLMesh, Dataform).
• Experience with ETL orchestration (Fivetran, Airflow).
• Infrastructure as code and container orchestration on a major cloud (AWS, GCP, Azure).
• Design docs that resolve cross-team architecture questions and clear communication with non-technical partners.

Responsibilities

• Model the business by building data products for analysts, engineers, product teams, partners, and AI tools.
• Make data agent-ready by shaping semantic context and interfaces with governed definitions and source traceability.
• Build governance into the platform, including access policy, change control, and SOC 2 prep.
• Build and run pipelines with CI/CD, observability, and SLAs.
• Collaborate with finance, operations, product, and engineering to evolve data requirements.
• Design and operate secure, low-latency data access paths for products, partners, and agents.
• Mentor teammates, review code, and provide templates and CI checks to ship trusted data.

Skills

SQL

Python

Data modeling

Tools

dbt

Airflow

Fivetran

Looker

Hex

Job description

Palmetto is a consumer energy platform that provides homeowners with a single destination to discover, purchase, finance, install, monitor and manage home energy products and services. By offering one integrated platform across solar, battery storage, HVAC, heat pumps and more, Palmetto helps homeowners make home energy more affordable, reliable and accessible. Today Palmetto serves hundreds of thousands of homeowners, across 30+ states, building the operating infrastructure for the consumer energy transition, one home at a time.

Our employees are our most valuable resource. We foster a promote-from-within culture that prioritizes talent development, career growth, and purpose-driven work. Palmetto offers a comprehensive benefits package—including unlimited PTO, medical, dental, and vision coverage, paid parental leave, retirement plans, and more—so you can have it all both personally and professionally. Palmetto prioritizes people, planet, and profit—backed by a culture that values collaboration, impact, and balance. Join us in building a brighter, cleaner world.

Location

This position will be remote based in the United States.

Reporting

This position will report to the Senior Manager, Data Engineering.

Summary of Role

You will own the technical design of the data platform that powers Palmetto's products, partners, and AI agents. Our data spans the whole customer journey: sales, lending, installation, interconnection, and years of system production. You will turn it into one governed, trustworthy view of the business, with each metric defined once so every dashboard, notebook, and agent returns the same answer. You will also build the secure, authorized, auditable path that lets people and systems use that data directly.

This is a high-leverage individual-contributor role. You'll set technical direction, write foundational code, and work closely with core platform and product teams. AI agents are first-class consumers of our platform, and we build with them every day.

Strategic & Tactical

• Model the business. Build and own data products that deliver trustworthy data, from bronze to gold, for analysts, engineers, product teams, partners, and AI tools.
• Make data agent-ready. Shape the semantic context, documentation, and interfaces that let agents answer from governed definitions, with answers that trace back to source.
• Build governance in. Treat classification, masking, access policy, and change control as code, and prepare the platform for SOC 2 and related compliance audits.
• Build and run pipelines. Operate ingestion and orchestration as code, with CI/CD, observability, alerting, and SLAs.
• Communicate. Partner with finance, operations, product and engineering to understand how their data requirements are evolving.
• Build the access path. Design and operate the secure, authorized, low-latency interface through which products, partners, and agents consume data.
• Raise the bar. Review code, mentor teammates, and give engineering teams templates and CI checks to ship trusted data.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in data engineering, including time at a Staff or lead level owning a platform used by multiple teams.
• Deep experience in SQL and Python.
• Strong database fundamentals in a modern analytical warehouse (e.g., Snowflake, BigQuery): schema design, query plans, distributed computing.
• Deep experience with dbt or an adjacent transformation framework (e.g., SQLMesh, Dataform).
• Experience with ETL orchestration (e.g., Fivetran, Airflow).
• Infrastructure as code and container orchestration on a major cloud (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Demonstrated agentic engineering beyond prompting: you run coding agents in loops checked by specs and tests, and stay curious about new tools.
• Design docs that settled cross-team architecture questions, and clear written and verbal communication with non-technical partners.
• Working knowledge of API design, authentication and authorization (e.g., OAuth/OIDC, RBAC), and PII handling.
• Knowledge of reporting tools such as Looker and Hex is a plus

Employment is contingent upon the successful completion of a background check.

Palmetto embraces diversity and is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. Employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or any other status protected under federal, state, or local law.

To ensure a fair evaluation, we may use AI to assist in sorting applications, but all final decisions are made by our hiring team and no candidate dispositions are automated. We will keep your information on file for four years from the date of your application. For detailed information about how we handle your data and our use of AI, please review our full privacy policy.

Please note that this position requires working in the office four days per week in our Charlotte HQ (Monday–Thursday). Are you able to accommodate this schedule?