Principal Data Engineer

Job Posting Title: Principal Data Engineer

Hiring Department: Data to Insights

Position Open To: All Applicants

Weekly Scheduled Hours: 40

FLSA Status: Exempt

Earliest Start Date: Immediately

Position Duration: Expected to Continue Until Aug 31, 2026

Location: Texas

Job Details:

General Notes
The Data to Insights (D2I) Initiative at UT Austin is an investment to build a trusted, integrated, and scalable information infrastructure that transforms complex UT data into valued insights for data-informed decisions. As a team member in the Data to Insights (D2I) Initiative, you will work with a cross-campus team using the latest cloud technologies to build a next-generation data ecosystem that will improve decision-making and advance the university's mission. We believe the best ideas arise from collaborative work among colleagues from varied backgrounds and experiences. If you're the type of person who loves to learn and wants to know your work has meaning, you may find your career home at UT Austin. Please note that this position is currently funded through August 31, 2026.

Purpose

The Principal Data Engineer for the UT Data Hub improves university outcomes and advances the UT mission to transform lives for the benefit of society by increasing the usability and value of institutional data. You will be responsible for leading the data engineering team to innovate and implement the newest data engineering trends and best practices to create complex data pipelines within UT's cloud data ecosystem in support of academic and administrative needs. In collaboration with our team of data professionals, you will help build and run a modern data hub to enable advanced data-driven decision making for UT. You will leverage your creativity to solve complex technical problems and build effective relationships through open communication within the team and outside partners.

Responsibilities

Technical Leadership

• Design, plan, develop and deploy production quality enterprise level data pipelines using Cloud technologies with a team of data engineers using new and emerging industry standard tools, frameworks, and best practices.
• Conduct and participate in code reviews for high-quality code.
• Identify and address bottlenecks in data pipelines while looking for optimizations, performance, and scalability.
• Develop systems to ensure data quality, consistency, cost optimization and security compliance.
• Contribute to coding, debugging, and solving complex engineering challenges.

Project Management & Collaboration

• Provide technical leadership and mentor data engineering team members to encourage a collaborative and growth mindset.
• Collaborate with technical architects and groups across campus by presenting best practices to foster campus-wide modern technology innovation.

Communication

• Provide regular updates on project status, technical challenges, and business solutions to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Communicate technical design to all stakeholders while highlighting the pros and cons of different solutions for on-time project delivery.
• Ensure all project deliverables (technical, process, and best practices) are documented for future reference and training.

Innovation

• Coordinate research and development of advanced technology systems and development projects and build case or justification for such activity.
• Stay up to date with the latest tools, frameworks, and technologies in data engineering, recommending and implementing innovative solutions.

Other

• Participate in hiring and recruitment activities of new team members.
• Other duties as assigned.

Required Qualifications

• BS or MS degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or equivalent professional experience.
• 5 - 8 years of Data Engineering experience with Amazon Web Services.
• 3 years of experience in Cloud Architecture and Data Strategy, preferably in a large enterprise environment.
• Eight plus years of experience in designing, implementing, troubleshooting, and monitoring complex production data pipelines or enterprise software solutions.
• Proficient in designing scalable, high-performance data architecture and data pipelines.
• Expert programming skills in Python, CDK scripting and SQL knowledge.
• Experience in designing and implementing complex ETL or ELT pipelines in relational and non-relational databases including Data Lakes.
• Experience developing and implementing Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) systems.
• Five plus years of experience developing and implementing test driven architecture solutions.
• Expert in systems analysis, design, development, quality assurance, and integration methodologies.
• Excellent problem solving, analytical and troubleshooting skills.
• Excellent verbal and written communication to communicate both to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Self-motivated and able to organize work independently in a rapidly changing environment.

Relevant education and experience may be substituted as appropriate.

Preferred Qualifications

• Eight years of experience in Data Engineering or related field with at least five years of hands-on experience designing and building complex data pipelines using cloud-based infrastructure, preferably AWS Technologies.
• Five years of experience or more with Agile software development methodologies and tracking software.
• Experience with Data Lakes, Delta Lakes, Lakehouse, Spark, Hive, Apache Airflow, Testing Frameworks, Streaming Pipelines, Kafka etc., is a plus.

Salary Range : $125,000 - $143,712

Working Conditions

• May work around standard office conditions.
• Repetitive use of a keyboard at a workstation.
• Up to 100% remote at employee discretion with office work environment also an option.

Required Materials

• Resume/CV
• 3 work references with their contact information; at least one reference should be from a supervisor.
• Letter of interest.

Important for applicants who are NOT current university employees or contingent workers: You will be prompted to submit your resume the first time you apply, then you will be provided an option to upload a new Resume for subsequent applications. Any additional Required Materials (letter of interest, references, etc.) will be uploaded in the Application Questions section; you will be able to multi-select additional files.

Employment Eligibility: Regular staff who have been employed in their current position for the last six continuous months are eligible for openings being recruited for through University-Wide or Open Recruiting, to include both promotional opportunities and lateral transfers.

Background Checks: A criminal history background check will be required for finalist(s) under consideration for this position.

Equal Opportunity Employer: The University of Texas at Austin complies with all applicable federal and state laws regarding nondiscrimination and affirmative action.