Data Engineer

Overview

The Data Engineer will play a crucial role in advancing the CDC Foundation's mission by designing, building, and maintaining data infrastructure for a public health organization.

This role is aligned to the Workforce Acceleration Initiative (WAI). WAI is a federally funded CDC Foundation program with the goal of helping the nation’s public health agencies by providing them with the technology and data experts they need to accelerate their information system improvements.

Working within the Communicable Disease Epidemiology Section in the Bureau of Communicable Disease Prevention and Control at the South Carolina Department of Public Health (DPH), the Data Engineer will be responsible for championing, designing, and supporting the development of the South Carolina DPH Data Pipeline.

The Data Engineer will apply experience with the collaborative process needed to take place with external partners to define and implement secure methods for data transmission and import from diverse data sources.

The Data Engineer will also apply experience with importation to deliver the architecture needed for data generation, storage, processing, and analysis.

The Data Engineer will collaborate with data content experts, analysts, data scientists, data modelers, warehouse architects, IT staff and other organization staff to design and implement proposed solutions and architectures that meet the needs of the public health agency.

The Data Engineer will be hired by the CDC Foundation and assigned to the South Carolina Department of Public Health, Bureau of Communicable Disease Prevention and Control, Communicable Disease Epi Section.

This position is eligible for a fully remote work arrangement for based candidates.

Responsibilities

• Assess existing data pipeline and work with programs to envision an ideal future state.
• Recommend and participate in the development of the systems and pipelines that enable efficient and reliable flow of data, including ingestion, processing, and storage.
• Collect data from various sources and transforming it to conform with defined rules to ensure accuracy and consistency.

Load data into storage systems or data warehouses.

• Optimize data pipelines, infrastructure, and workflows for performance and scalability.
• Monitor data pipelines and systems for performance issues, errors, and anomalies, and implement solutions to address them.
• Implement security measures to protect sensitive and highly confidential information.
• Collaborate with data scientists, analysts, and other partners to understand their data needs and requirements, and to ensure that the data infrastructure supports the organization's goals and objectives.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to understand data requirements and design scalable solutions that meet business needs.
• Implement and maintain ETL processes to ensure the accuracy, completeness, and consistency of data.
• Design and manage data storage systems, including relational databases, NoSQL databases, and data warehouses.
• Knowledgeable about industry trends, best practices, and emerging technologies in data engineering, and incorporating the trends into the organization's data infrastructure.
• Provide technical guidance to other staff.
• Communicate effectively with partners at all levels of the organization to gather requirements, provide updates, and present findings.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Technology, Data Science, or a related field.
• Minimum 5 years of relevant professional experience
• Proficiency in common scripting languages and specifications used in data engineering, such as Python, R, and SAS. Candidate must be able to develop reusable automations for data extract, transform and load, harnessing existing frameworks and industry best practices.
• Experience with big data technologies and frameworks.
• Strong understanding of transactional (OLTP) and analytical (OLAP) database concepts and systems, including relational database management systems (MS SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL).
• Experience regarding engineering best practices such as source control, automated testing, continuous integration and deployment, and peer review.
• Knowledge of data warehousing concepts and tools.
• Experience with cloud computing platforms.
• Expertise in data modeling, ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes, and data integration techniques.
• Familiarity with agile development methodologies, software design patterns, and best practices.
• Strong analytical thinking and problem-solving abilities.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to convey technical concepts to non-technical partners effectively.
• Flexibility to adapt to evolving project requirements and priorities.
• Outstanding interpersonal and teamwork skills; and the ability to develop productive working relationships with colleagues and partners.
• Experience working in a virtual environment with remote partners and teams
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office.

Special Notes This role is involved in a dynamic public health program. As such, roles and responsibilities are subject to change as situations evolve.

Roles and responsibilities listed above may be expanded upon or updated to match priorities and needs, once written approval is received by the CDC Foundation to best support the public health programming.