Staff Data Engineer - TS/SCI Cleared

Twenty; Arlington (VA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

A technology company in Arlington, VA is seeking an experienced Data Engineer to lead the development and operation of data infrastructure for cyber operations. The ideal candidate has over 8 years of experience in data engineering and ETL pipeline construction, with expertise in data lake architecture and proactive leadership skills. This role requires a focus on national security outcomes and the ability to work closely with engineers and analysts. An active TS/SCI security clearance is required, with occasional travel to Fort Meade, MD.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in data engineering and/or data architecture.
• Expertise in building ETL pipelines and operating them in production.
• Deep experience with data lake architecture and querying systems.
• Strong schema and index design skills.
• Experience with column-oriented databases in production environments.
• Proven leadership experience.

Responsibilities

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

Skills

Data modeling

Schema design

ETL pipeline construction

Operational excellence

Collaboration with engineers

Leadership

Tools

Apache Iceberg

Delta Lake

AWS Athena

Apache Spark

ClickHouse

Neo4j

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

Security / Work Environment

This role requires an active TS/SCI security clearance with appropriate polygraph and the ability to maintain it. This role is on-site in Arlington, VA with occasional travel to Fort Meade, MD.

If this role sounds like you, apply and share with us your interest.

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.