Data Engineer Government Jobs in Virginia (NOW HIRING)

POSITION DESCRIPTION:

Pioneering Evolution is seeking a Data Engineer to design, develop, integrate, and operate secure enterprise data solutions for the SyncPoint program. The Data Engineer will work closely with software engineers, the Chief Engineer, product teams, analysts, and the AI/ML Engineer to build reliable data pipelines, data models, integrations, and analytical data services. The role ensures that SyncPoint data is accurate, traceable, secure, performant, and readily available to operational applications, reporting capabilities, external integrations, and AI-enabled features.

The ideal candidate brings strong experience with PostgreSQL, Microsoft Azure, data modeling, ETL/ELT, APIs, and event-driven architectures, combined with an interest in operating data solutions within regulated DoD environments. This role is expected to develop deep familiarity with DoD financial data domains including Navy ERP, PIEE, EDW, and the PPBE lifecycle. This position aligns to the Data Engineer (Services Lead) role defined in the SyncPoint staffing plan.

Key Responsibilities:

Data Architecture and Modeling

• Design and maintain relational and analytical data models supporting SyncPoint’s complex DoD financial management domains.
• Develop normalized transactional schemas and denormalized models optimized for application, integration, and analytical workloads.
• Define relationships, constraints, indexes, and data-integrity rules; support multi-tenant isolation strategies.
• Develop strategies for historical data, auditing, lineage, provenance, and retention aligned to DoD requirements.
• Participate in architecture reviews; document data flows, ownership, and system-of-record boundaries.

Data Engineering and Pipelines

• Design, develop, test, and maintain reliable ETL/ELT pipelines for importing, transforming, validating, and distributing data across SyncPoint.
• Build repeatable processes for migrating legacy financial, planning, project, funding, and operational data from predecessor systems.
• Implement data validation, reconciliation, deduplication, and quality-control processes.
• Support incremental, scheduled, and event-driven data synchronization across services and environments.

PostgreSQL and Database Engineering

• Develop and optimize complex PostgreSQL queries, views, indexes, functions, and stored procedures.
• Analyze query execution plans and resolve database performance issues.
• Design and maintain hierarchical data structures; develop safe schema migration, seed-data, and data-correction scripts.
• Support database schema evolution across development, test, and production environments.

Data Integration

• Build and maintain integrations between SyncPoint and external government and commercial systems including Navy ERP, PIEE, and EDW.
• Develop transformations between external schemas and SyncPoint’s internal canonical data models.
• Support secure service-to-service REST API integrations with appropriate authentication and authorization patterns.

AI and Analytics Data Enablement

• Prepare trusted, structured datasets for AI, machine-learning, and analytics capabilities.
• Support development of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) capabilities and data retrieval services for generative AI workflows.
• Work with the AI/ML Engineer to establish data selection, metadata, provenance, lineage, and access-control requirements.
• Ensure AI systems retrieve only information the requesting user or service is authorized to access.

Data Quality and Governance

• Establish automated data-quality checks for completeness, validity, consistency, uniqueness, and referential integrity.
• Maintain data lineage and traceability for critical financial information; document data mappings, transformation rules, and data dictionaries.
• Support data retention, archival, and deletion requirements appropriate to DoD and compliance environments.

Security and Compliance

• Design data solutions appropriate for DoD Impact Level 4 (IL4) environments.
• Support secure handling and protection of Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI).
• Apply least-privilege access, encryption, auditing, and secure data-transfer practices.
• Ensure development and troubleshooting processes do not expose protected data through logs, development tools, or unauthorized environments.

Key Competencies 

• Strong data modeling and SQL expertise
• Data pipeline design, development, and reliability
• Security-conscious data engineering
• Ability to translate business requirements into durable data models
• Systems-level problem solving across distributed data flows
• Clear technical documentation
• Effective collaboration with architects, developers, DevOps, and AI/ML engineers

Technical Environment:
 Databases: PostgreSQL, Azure Cosmos DB
 Cloud: Microsoft Azure / Azure Government
 Languages: SQL, C#/.NET, Python
 Data Engineering: ETL/ELT, data modeling, data quality, JSON, REST APIs
 Messaging: RabbitMQ, Azure Service Bus, Azure Event Bus
 Architecture: Microservices, event-driven, domain events, data projections
 AI/Data Services: Azure OpenAI, embeddings, vector retrieval, RAG 
 DevOps: Git, Docker, CI/CD, Kubernetes, Azure DevOps 
 Security: Managed Identity, RBAC/ABAC, private networking, CUI/IL4 controls
REQUIRED EXPERIENCE: 

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Information Systems, Mathematics, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent professional experience.
• 5+ years of professional experience in data engineering, database engineering, or backend engineering.
• Advanced proficiency with SQL and relational database design.
• Strong hands-on experience with PostgreSQL, including schema design, query optimization, and performance tuning.
• Experience building production ETL/ELT pipelines.
• Experience with C#/.NET for data processing, integration, or automation.
• Experience developing or consuming REST APIs.
• Experience with cloud-based data platforms, preferably Microsoft Azure.
• Strong understanding of data quality, lineage, auditing, and governance principles.
• Experience with Git-based development workflows and CI/CD practices.

DESIRED EXPERIENCE:

• Experience with Azure Government.
• Experience developing solutions for DoD or other federal government environments.
• Familiarity with IL4/IL5, CUI, NIST 800-171, or related compliance requirements.
• Experience with event-driven architectures (RabbitMQ, Azure Service Bus, Azure Event Hubs, or Kafka).
• Experience with microservice architectures and eventual-consistency patterns.
• Experience integrating financial, ERP, planning, or program-management systems.
• Experience with large-scale legacy data migrations.
• Experience supporting AI/ML or generative AI applications; familiarity with vector search, embeddings, or RAG architectures.
• Experience with Azure Cosmos DB.

WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE OFFER:
In addition to competitive salaries and opportunities for professional development and advancement, our employees enjoy a comprehensive range of benefits. To keep pace with the changing needs of our employees, we continually evaluate our benefit plans.

• Paid time off
• 10 paid holidays
• Medical insurance
• Dental insurance
• Vision insurance
• Legal assistance
• Company-paid life insurance and AD&D
• Company-paid long-term and short-term disability insurance
• Tuition reimbursement
• 401(k) plan with company contribution
• Continuing Education Opportunities