Data Engineer

In this role at Booz Allen Hamilton, you will help design the data foundations that allow AI agents to operate on authorized enterprise information. You will build pipelines, knowledge indexes, and retrieval services, while taking ownership of reliability and collaborating with AI Engineering to improve retrieval behavior and response quality.

What you will do

• Design data architectures and build the pipelines, knowledge indexes, and retrieval services that ground agents in authorized enterprise information.
• Partner with source-system owners and engineering teams to define data contracts, integrate structured and unstructured sources, and maintain permissions, lineage, quality, and freshness.
• Own the reliability of data and retrieval services while partnering with AI Engineering on application retrieval behavior and response quality.
• Contribute to ingestion, transformation, indexing, synchronization, and retrieval services.
• Apply the emphasis of the role: positions focused on architecture and governance decisions, or engineer positions focused on pipeline, connector, and service implementation.

Key requirements

• Experience designing or implementing enterprise data platforms, lakehouse architectures, and integrations for structured and unstructured data.
• Experience with SQL and Python, including developing, testing, and operating ETL or ELT pipelines.
• Experience defining data models, schemas, data contracts, APIs, and access patterns that support downstream applications.
• Experience with data governance, source permissions, lineage, quality controls, and monitoring for freshness and availability.
• Knowledge of retrieval-augmented generation, embeddings, vector indexes, and semantic or hybrid search.
• Ability to troubleshoot ingestion and retrieval failures and evaluate relevance, latency, scalability, and data quality.
• Ability to translate enterprise requirements into architecture decisions, integration standards, and governance patterns.
• Ability to implement and maintain ingestion, transformation, indexing, synchronization, and retrieval services.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust or Suitability/Fitness determination based on client requirements.
• Bachelor’s degree.

Technologies

• SQL, Python
• ETL, ELT
• Retrieval-augmented generation, embeddings, vector indexes
• Semantic search, hybrid search

Nice if you have

• Experience with Databricks, Spark, Delta Lake, vector databases, or comparable platforms.
• Experience with permission-aware retrieval, metadata enrichment, incremental ingestion, or knowledge engineering.
• Experience delivering reusable customer connectors and data services for production AI applications.

Benefits

• Health insurance; life insurance; disability insurance
• Financial benefits
• Retirement benefits
• Paid leave
• Professional development; tuition assistance
• Work-life programs; dependent care
• Recognition awards program that acknowledges employees for exceptional performance and superior demonstration of company values
• Full-time and part-time employees working at least 20 hours a week on a regular basis are eligible to participate in Booz Allen benefit programs

Vetting and policy notes

• Applicants selected will be subject to a government investigation and may need to meet eligibility requirements of the U.S. government client.
• Identity verification includes an identity verification process leveraging advanced biometrics and AI; candidates will be on camera during interviews and assessments, and the company reserves the right to take a picture to verify identity and prevent fraud.
• Use of AI or other tools to assist with responses during interviews (in-person or virtual) is prohibited unless permission is explicitly provided.

Work model and location

• Location: McLean, VA (onsite)
• Salary: USD 62,000 - 141,000 per yearly
• Onsite work is primarily performed full-time at a customer facility where employees collaborate directly with colleagues and customers as required by the role.

Non-discrimination

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other status protected by applicable federal, state, local, or international law.