Data Engineering Project Manager and Technical Lead
Estrada Consulting, Inc. | University research center | Onsite, Clearfield, Utah | $65 to $90 per hour
About the role
ECI is looking for a hands-on technical lead to run a six-month data engineering engagement onsite. You will plan the work with the center's staff, set priorities against the data dictionary, lead the weekly partner meetings, and do real engineering work on the pipelines and data model, while making sure the center can own the system when we leave.
About the project
A university advanced materials research center in northern Utah builds and tests high-temperature carbon fiber composite parts for aerospace. Its 3D printers, ovens, furnaces, microscopes and mechanical and thermal test machines each keep their data on the machine. This six-month engagement builds the center's materials database: pipelines that extract machine logs, sensor readings and microscope images, land them in Azure Blob Storage in an Azure Government account, and stage and model them on Databricks so researchers can analyze their experiments. The team works alongside the center's staff and student interns and hands the system over with training and documentation.
Responsibilities
- Plan and track the work: high-priority data sources in the first three months, then the remaining sources.
- Lead weekly partner meetings, report progress and risks, and get deliverables reviewed and accepted.
- Work with researchers and staff to design extraction for each machine and refine existing extraction scripts.
- Set the technical direction for staging, the production data model, orchestration and alerting on Databricks.
- Own security and permissions in the Azure Government environment.
- Train and mentor student interns, and lead the handover: training sessions, recordings and documentation.
Required qualifications
- Three years or more of data engineering experience
- Experience leading technical projects: planning, weekly status with the client, priorities and acceptance of deliverables
- Experience with data ingestion, data pipelines, data modeling and monitoring
- Cloud experience (Azure, AWS or GCP), including IaaS and PaaS services
- Data security, permission management and secure networking experience
- U.S. citizen able to work onsite in Clearfield, Utah, full time
Preferred qualifications
- Databricks and Apache Spark
- Microsoft Azure, including Azure Government, Blob Storage and Azure Data Factory or Databricks Workflows
- Data lake or lakehouse (Delta Lake) experience
- Experience training and mentoring student interns or junior staff
- Manufacturing, laboratory, sensor or industrial machine data
- PMP, Scrum or similar certification
Terms
Work arrangement: Onsite, full time (40 hours per week) at the research center in Clearfield, Utah. U.S. citizenship is required.
Duration: Six months, possibly renewable, contingent on contract award. The expected start is January 2027.
Rate: $65 to $90 per hour (W2 contract), depending on experience.
Other requirements: The candidate's name and resume will be included in ECI's proposal, with references who can verify data engineering experience.