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ION Storage Systems offers solid-state battery solutions that prioritize performance, safety, and durability. Focusing on a variety of portable and stationary energy storage applications, ION's patented, three-dimensional ceramics design offers a sustainable approach to next-generation energy storage. Built on a scalable, modular ceramic structure, ION's batteries are ready to meet the demands of an increasingly electrified world. We are backed by leading venture capital firms including Alsop Louie Partners, Clear Creek Investments, VoLo Earth Ventures, and Toyota Ventures.

We offer an inclusive environment with opportunities for growth, and we believe that a thriving workspace leads to a thriving company. We hope you will contact us to learn more and to be a part of our diverse, collaborative team!

We are seeking a full-time Data Platform Engineer to join our team in Beltsville, MD. This role owns the data systems that connect our production lines, QC, cell development, cycling labs, equipment logging, analytics, and internal applications. You will design, build, and operate the pipelines, databases, orchestration, monitoring, and back-end services that move manufacturing and lab data into the dashboards, models, and tools our scientists, engineers, and operators rely on every day. This is a hands-on engineering role with broad scope - the right person is comfortable writing production code, maintaining existing systems, and partnering across data, IT/OT, and manufacturing teams, and using AI coding assistants and agentic tools as a force multiplier across the full development lifecycle. The role is open to mid-level and senior candidates; we will level to fit.

Responsibilities:

Design, build, and maintain reliable data systems - orchestration, validation, monitoring, and alerting controls - for production, lab, and equipment data sources.

Own infra, schema design, ETL/ELT workflows, CI/CD, monitoring, and data governance.

Integrate with manufacturing and lab systems including ceramic production, cell manufacturing, QC, and robotic systems, and the internal applications built around them.

Build and maintain back-end services and internal tools - VMs, APIs, data services, and lightweight web apps that surface data to engineering, ops, and executive stakeholders.

Design and operate the platform layer: Docker/K8s, git, CI/CD, and backups. Identify incidents, drive to resolution, and lead post-mortems.

Minimize single points of failure across the data stack through documentation, cross-training, and engineering for maintainability.

Partner with Executive, IT/OT, R&D, and Operations stakeholders to scope work, plan deliveries, and roll out changes safely.

Employ governed AI workflows across day-to-day engineering, including code generation, refactoring, debugging, documentation, code review, and operational automation.

Maintain comprehensive documentation for systems, schemas, pipelines, runbooks, and backup/recovery procedures.

Required Experience:

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field, or equivalent hands-on experience in data engineering and backend systems.

4+ years of hands-on experience building and operating production data systems, including database schema design (MS SQL/Postgres preferred), query/index tuning, and ETL/ELT workflows.

Strong knowledge for data engineering best practices - pipeline code, data validation, services, monitoring, and tooling.

Production experience with a pipeline orchestration platform (e.g. Airflow or Dagster).

Hands-on experience with containerization, version control, and CI/CD workflows in a team setting.

Demonstrated ownership of operational monitoring, logging, alerting, and incident response for production systems.

Experience working with manufacturing, lab, sensor, or other equipment-generated data - bridging the gap between raw machine output and analytics-ready datasets.

Track record of maintaining and improving existing systems, not just building greenfield.

Hands-on production use of AI coding assistants and/or agentic development tools with a clear point of view on where they help, where they don't, and how to use them responsibly.

Desirable Experience:

Experience operating in hybrid environments that span on-prem infrastructure and cloud services (Azure preferred) and thoughtful about where each system belongs.

Semantic models, dataflows, and downstream reporting infrastructure (Power BI preferred).

Internal application development experience – data entry UIs, sample/run trackers, equipment dashboards, or workflow apps tied to production systems.

Exposure to MES, ERP, SCADA (Ignition preferred), or other manufacturing-traceability and production-operations platforms.

Experience with regulated, quality-sensitive, or audit-driven data workflows (e.g., manufacturing, QC, automotive, aerospace, defense, life sciences).

Experience working in early-stage environments where you owned systems end-to-end.

Experience building agentic workflows, LLM-backed services, or AI-driven automation into production data or operations systems (RAG over internal data, MCP servers, evals, prompt/tool design).

Required Skills:

Solid understanding of data systems architecture, including operational databases, pipelines, orchestration, and observability.

Excellent critical thinking, problem-solving, and debugging skills, with discipline around documentation and continuous improvement.

Self-motivated and able to take full ownership of critical systems, including the unglamorous maintenance work that keeps them running.

Proactive in identifying and mitigating reliability, data-quality, and security risks.

Strong written and verbal communication, comfortable with both technical deep-dives and stakeholder updates.

Comfort working across IT/OT and manufacturing teams to translate production-floor problems into data engineering work.

Department: Office of the CTO

Location: Beltsville, MD

Reports to: Data Solutions Architect

Benefits:

In addition to a competitive salary, we offer the following company benefits:

Medical, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance

Stock options in an early-stage company

Hybrid

Company and floating holidays

17 days of PTO to start, with increase upon tenure

401k plan with a 4% company match beginning after first paycheck

Wellness allowance of $1k annually

Company Description

Ion Storage Systems Inc., located in Beltsville, MD, is a rapidly growing company commercializing its breakthrough lithium metal battery technology based on discoveries made at the University of Maryland. The company is committed to developing products that will impact everyday life on a global scale. Our technology improves product performance and safety in a variety of applications including defense and aerospace, consumer electronics, electrified transportation, and renewable energy storage. Our team is made up of innovative, driven & creative individuals who are passionate about their work. The company offers an inclusive environment, growth opportunities and encourages work/life balance.

To all recruitment agencies: Ion Storage Systems, Inc. will not accept agency resumes for this role. Please do not forward resumes to our jobs email, or to any Ion Storage Systems employees or any other company email address. Ion Storage Systems is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.

Ion Storage Systems, Inc. is proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, ancestry, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, or Veteran status.

Eligibility to work in the United States as a U.S. Citizen or U.S. permanent resident is required for consideration.