Senior Data Engineer (Talend / SQL / Data Pipelines)

Senior Data Engineer Job at a

Glance Location:

hybrid in 

Richmond VA Contract:

W2 only, 12 month contract

Pay:

$60/hr Key Responsibilities Build end-to-end data pipelines and ETL/ELT solutions to support analytics, reporting, and AI/ML use cases, ensuring solutions are robust and production-ready through practical implementation Apply scalable patterns for batch and incremental processing by developing, testing, and deploying data workflows, focusing on hands-on coding and troubleshooting Review and implement data modeling, transformation logic, and performance strategies, using deep technical expertise to optimize and validate solutions Evaluate, select, and integrate tooling, frameworks, and platform capabilities by actively prototyping and configuring systems to meet project requirements Build up complex, high-volume data pipelines using SQL-centric ETL/ELT patterns Design and implement scalable streaming pipelines to process real-time data, ensuring low latency and reliable delivery for analytics and operational use cases Lead performance tuning efforts across pipelines, warehouses, and workloads Ensure data pipelines are resilient, observable, and production ready Implement enterprise-grade error handling, restartability, and monitoring Build and maintain scalable, low-latency streaming data pipelines using technologies such as Kafka, Kinesis, or Spark Streaming Perform on-the-fly data cleaning, validation, and enrichment before data reaches its final destination Use strategies such as indexing and partitioning to fine-tune the data warehouse and big data environments to improve query response time and scalability Implement standards for data quality checks, validation, and reconciliation Ensure pipelines meet security, access control, and governance requirements Partner with governance & DataOps teams on metadata, lineage, and auditability Apply consistent naming conventions, documentation, and coding standards Improve operational monitoring, alerting, and incident response processes Proactively identify reliability, performance, and cost optimization opportunities Support and guide production troubleshooting and root cause analysis Investigate data quality incidents and identify design/coding gaps Participate in design and code reviews to enforce quality and best practices Partner with infrastructure, application, and architecture teams to generate process designs and complex transformations Translate ambiguous requirements into well-designed technical solutions Work in complex multi-platform environments on multiple project assignments Required Skills 5-7+ years Data Engineering Hands-on builder (not just design/architecture) Strong in

SQL, ELT

pipelines, and performance tuning Experience with production-grade pipelines (monitoring, restartability, quality) Comfortable jumping into existing systems quickly Experience with ETL tools (Talend preferred, Informatica/dbt acceptable) Required Education Bachelors Degree Preferred Skills Experience supporting AI/ML or advanced analytics pipelines Cloud platform experience (AWS, Azure, GCP) Prior experience influencing enterprise data standards or reference architecture Experience optimizing cost and performance in cloud data warehouses Hands-on experience with

Cribl, Apache Kafka, Kafka Connect, Spark Streaming, or Apache Flink About CEI:

As a trusted technology partner, CEI delivers solutions that help our customers transform their business and achieve meaningful results. From strategy and custom application development through application management - our technology and digital experience services are tailored to meet each unique need of our customers. Our staffing solutions bring specialized skills to complement our customers'' workforce and project requirements. #ZR #INDGEN