Forward Deployed Data Engineer

Benefits and culture

Based in Groton, CT with remote options, this role involves on-site collaboration with customers and requires a U.S. Secret clearance. Spear AI offers a benefits rich, growth oriented environment that values practical impact, direct leadership involvement, and a collaborative, autonomous culture.

• Unlimited paid time off to recharge and maintain work life balance
• Dedicated sick time to support health and wellbeing
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Eleven paid holidays
• Professional development opportunities and certification reimbursement
• Collaborative environment with direct access to leadership in a flat structure
• Mission driven projects with real world impact
• Growth opportunities during a period of expansion
• 401(k) plan with company match
• Onsite, remote, or hybrid work arrangements depending on the role
• Relocation assistance where applicable
• Referral bonuses and performance bonuses
• Life insurance and disability coverage
• Home office setup stipend
• Professional certification reimbursement, position dependent

Responsibilities

• Build real-time data pipelines using MQTT and Redpanda for stream processing
• Develop offline data pipelines with Dagster for batch workflows
• Parse and process binary message formats from diverse data sources
• Construct data warehouses leveraging Postgres, Apache Iceberg, Parquet, and S3
• Design data models optimized for high performance queries
• Validate and normalize incoming data sources
• Improve local development and CI/CD with modern tooling and GitHub Actions

Requirements

• Current or active U.S. Secret clearance
• Expertise in time-series data processing and analysis (windowing, resampling, interpolation)
• Proficiency in Python and Rust for data engineering workflows
• Experience with binary message parsing
• Familiarity with row-based and columnar data formats
• Experience with OLTP and OLAP databases
• Knowledge of distributed systems, streaming architectures, and batch processing patterns
• Hands-on experience with batch orchestrators such as Dagster or Airflow
• Hands-on experience with streaming platforms such as Redpanda or Kafka
• Hands-on experience with binary message formats such as Protobuf

Technology stack

• MQTT
• Redpanda
• Dagster
• Apache Iceberg
• Parquet
• Postgres
• S3
• Python
• Rust
• Protobuf
• Airflow
• GitHub Actions
• Kafka

Nice to have

• Experience with IoT devices and sensors
• Digital signal processing experience
• Geospatial analysis and GIS experience
• Familiar with working in monorepos

Why work with us

• We ship quickly on meaningful projects rather than long, inconsequential cycles
• Our work has tangible impact, including deployments related to subsystems and integrations with associated hardware
• Responsible, values driven growth during an expansion phase
• Remote friendly with real time collaboration on Slack and asynchronous work via GitHub
• Profitability and investor backing support sustainable success
• Autonomy to focus on quality work without excessive gatekeeping
• Light hearted culture while building safety focused products