Senior Data and AI Engineer

• Senior Data and AI Engineer
• Location: Joint Base Andrews, Maryland (Onsite with Hybrid)
• Duration: 12 Months Contract
• Job Type: Part- time

Pay Rate: $55-$60/hr. on 1099 all inc

Clearance: Active SECRET security clearance required.

Position Summary:

We're seeking a Senior Data and AI Engineer to design, build, secure, optimize, and sustain enterprise data and artificial intelligence capabilities supporting the Air National Guard Chief Data and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO). This senior technical professional will lead complex data ingestion, transformation, orchestration, storage, semantic layer, and AI/ML integration work across Microsoft Azure, Azure Databricks, Palantir Foundry, AskSage, Advana, Power BI, and related DoD environments. The role will help maintain mission-critical data services while delivering new capabilities that improve enterprise readiness and decision-making.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Design, build, test, deploy, monitor, troubleshoot, and maintain automated and manual ETL/ELT pipelines integrating structured, unstructured, API, batch, and streaming data from DAF, ANG, DoD, and approved external source systems.
• Develop transformation logic using SQL and Python to cleanse, standardize, deduplicate, validate, enrich, and reconcile enterprise data in accordance with the CDAO data dictionary and business rules.
• Implement and optimize data workflows, job sequencing, automated triggers, monitoring, logging, alerting, and recovery processes within Azure Databricks and supported cloud environments.
• Build automated data-quality controls that quarantine invalid records, prevent silent corruption, support reconciliation, and provide traceable evidence of pipeline health.
• Administer and optimize data warehouses, data lakes, repositories, catalogs, indexes, and dataflows across Microsoft Azure, Palantir Foundry, AskSage, and Advana IL4/IL5 environments.
• Enforce data security, encryption, access control, least-privilege, CUI handling, lineage, metadata, and data governance requirements across managed repositories and integrations.
• Design and maintain cross-platform data movement and interoperability while preserving schema integrity, data quality, performance, and traceability.
• Develop and maintain semantic data layers, schemas, embeddings or vector indexes, and retrieval configurations that enable secure AI/ML queries across integrated enterprise data sets.
• Support the design, development, optimization, and troubleshooting of enterprise BI products in Microsoft Power BI, Palantir Foundry, and Advana, including Power BI dataflows and refresh processes.
• Partner with application developers to integrate data services with Microsoft Power Apps, Power Automate, and mission applications, including the ANGRC HR Management Tool, Flying Hour Tool, Commander’s Hub, and ANG Kneeboard.
• Maintain source code, configuration, infrastructure, and deployment artifacts in the authorized Git repository; implement automated CI/CD build, test, and security checks before production release.
• Create and maintain architecture diagrams, source-to-target mappings, data lineage, interface specifications, operational runbooks, release documentation, and system-performance reports.
• Perform technical root-cause analysis, triage critical failures, resolve stakeholder support requests, tune cost and performance, and recommend sustainable corrective actions.
• Provide technical leadership, peer review, mentoring, demonstrations, and formal training on data, BI, Palantir, AI, and prompt/context engineering topics.
• Collaborate with Government data owners, mission stakeholders, security teams, analysts, engineers, and developers to refine requirements and deliver accurate, secure, mission-ready capabilities.

Skills and Qualifications:

• Advanced expertise in data engineering, data architecture, ETL/ELT, data modeling, data quality, lineage, metadata management, orchestration, and performance optimization.
• Advanced SQL and Python skills, including development of reusable, testable transformation and validation code.
• Hands-on experience with Microsoft Azure and Azure Databricks; strong experience with lakehouse, warehouse, or cloud data-platform patterns.
• Experience with Palantir Foundry and Microsoft Power BI. Experience with AskSage, Advana/Warfighter Data Platform, or comparable DoD data platforms is highly desirable.
• Experience designing semantic layers and enabling AI/ML, natural-language query, retrieval-augmented generation, or vector-search use cases over governed enterprise data.
• Strong knowledge of Git, CI/CD, automated testing, monitoring, logging, secure deployment, and DevSecOps practices.
• Understanding of DoD IL4/IL5 security controls, CUI safeguards, access control, encryption, and data governance.
• Ability to analyze complex legacy data sources, define reliable integration patterns, and communicate technical decisions to both technical and mission audiences.
• Strong troubleshooting, documentation, collaboration, and technical leadership skills.

Required Education and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Software Engineering, Information Systems, Mathematics, or a related technical field.
• Minimum of eight (8) years of relevant experience in data engineering, data architecture, analytics engineering, software engineering, AI/ML engineering, or related technical work, including experience leading complex enterprise data solutions.
• Demonstrated experience building production-grade pipelines and data platforms using SQL, Python, cloud services, automated orchestration, data-quality controls, version control, and CI/CD.
• Demonstrated experience supporting secure enterprise or Government environments and working with cross-functional technical and mission stakeholders.
• A master’s degree in a related discipline and experience supporting DoD or Air Force data environments are preferred. An equivalent combination of education, relevant experience, and professional training may be considered.

Preferred Certifications:

• Microsoft Certified Fabric Data Engineer Associate or comparable Microsoft data engineering certification.
• Microsoft Certified Azure AI Engineer Associate or comparable AI engineering certification.
• Databricks Certified Data Engineer Professional or comparable Databricks certification.
• Palantir Foundry certification or documented advanced platform training.
• CompTIA Security+ or another certification aligned with the individual’s assigned DoD cybersecurity work role.