Senior Data Engineer

About InnovateEDU

InnovateEDU is a non-profit whose mission is to eliminate the opportunity gap by accelerating innovation in standards-aligned, next generation learning models and tools that serve, inform, and enhance teaching and learning. InnovateEDU is committed to massively disrupting K-12 public education by focusing on the development of scalable tools and practices that leverage innovation, technology, and new human capital systems to improve education for all students and close the opportunity gap.

About the Project

InnovateEDU strives to create real tooling and projects that greatly assist a school/district/state in moving toward embracing data standards, a data-driven culture, and data interoperability. Landing Zone, a project at InnovateEDU, provides school districts with a comprehensive cloud based data infrastructure through the implementation of an Ed-Fi Operational Data Store (ODS), data mart for analytics in Google BigQuery, and the necessary data workflows in Apache Airflow to connect previously siloed, disparate educational data systems. Landing Zone simplifies the process a district must go through to implement an Ed-Fi ODS, connecting Ed-Fi certified data sources, and consuming non Ed-Fi certified data once it has been aligned to the standard. This project has a heavy focus on data engineering, backend work, dev ops, and using data analytics tools to verify data.

Who You Are

You are a mission-driven individual and believe in working to close the educational opportunity gap through the use of data and technical solutions. You are excited about bringing order to disparate data, and writing data pipelines, and don’t mind being relentless in pursuing data accuracy. You’ve previously worked with SQL and Python and written code that interacts with APIs.

You are an optimistic problem-solver. You believe that together we can create real solutions that help the entire education sector move forward despite its complexity. You are excited to join a small but growing team working on an early-stage product and are looking forward to working on many different pieces of that product. You are open to feedback, bring your best every day, and are ready to grow in all areas of your work. You want to join a team of folks who share your vision for mission-driven work at the intersection of education and technology. Finally, you know that sharing often is key to this work, and are ready to document everything that you do so that data people in schools everywhere can benefit. This is not a big data project; we have smaller amounts of data across many domains.

Experience and Skills

You are a good fit if you:

• Have worked as a data analyst or data engineer in the past and are familiar with validating data and tools like Google BigQuery and Google Data Studio
• Have strong computer science fundamentals and experience with Python and specifically with Apache Airflow
• Experience with dbt
• Experience with ETL and tools like Pandas and Jupyter Notebooks,
• Consider yourself as having a very high attention to detail
• Have strong communication skills with both technical and non-technical people
• Are passionate about making an impact in K-12 education
• Are comfortable doing many different types of tasks and having to context switch between tasks relativity often
• Are passionate about building the best version of whatever you’re working on
• Are highly motivated to work autonomously, with strong organizational and time management skills

You’ll have an edge if you:

• Experience and knowledge of Kubernates, Docker, and Terraform
• Have worked in K-12 education in the past

Responsibilities

The Lead Data Engineer’s primary professional responsibilities will include, but not be limited to:

• Managing and supervising a team of engineers and data analysts
• Establishing a team culture and communication cadence which includes daily standup, code reviews, and ensuring timely customer responses
• Collaborating with the Customer Success Lead and team to ensure cohesion between engineering and implementation
• Leading estimates and work scope development for custom engineering work for customers
• Mentoring, teaching, and aiding in the professional development of team members
• Implementing and maintaining Landing Zone for new and returning customers
• Leading the creation, troubleshooting, and maintenance of data processing pipelines in Apache Airflow (ETL work)
• Running reports and exports in edTech source systems as well as Landing Zone infrastructure to perform data validation checks and communicate those back to our customers
• Maintaining Landing Zone documentation to ensure it is always up-to-date and reflective of how integrations function
• Deploying code updates across the Landing Zone customer base
• Leading the deployment of infrastructure on the Google Cloud Platform for new customers
• Leading in the development of a historical/longitudinal data storage system (data warehouse)
• Responding to customer support tickets (this is a shared responsibility on our team)
• Working with internal systems such as JIRA, Asana, Slack to stay organized and ensure communication with team members
• Other duties as assigned

What to expect in the hiring process:

• An introductory phone call with a Manager
• A coding project that will take about 2 hours. This will be in Python and be related to processing data
• A project review and feedback call with the team
• Final round interviews, likely including our Executive Director

The range for this position will be $110,000 to $148,000. Salary is commensurate with education and experience.

Application Instructions

Please submit an application on this platform. Applications without both a resume and cover letter will not be considered.