Full Stack Data Engineer

Pivotal builds internal tools that help engineering teams explore and interpret flight data. As a Full Stack Data Engineer onsite in Palo Alto, CA, you’ll work across backend services, web front ends, dashboards and AI-assisted tooling, self-serve analysis experiences, and laptop-ready packaging for engineers.

What you’ll build

• Create and maintain internal web applications engineers use to work with flight data, including flight record browsers, query interfaces, and analysis tools that connect to the warehouse.
• Develop Python services and HTTP APIs that query AWS Athena and Amazon S3, returning results at interactive speed with pagination and caching for large result sets.
• Design data exploration interfaces for large telemetry datasets, such as sortable tables, filters, and time-series plots, targeted at engineers who do not plan to write SQL.
• Build agent-based tooling over the data platform so engineers can ask questions in plain language and follow a symptom to root cause without hand-writing queries. Tools should return underlying data and derivations so results can be verified before action.
• Convert recurring one-off analyses from firmware, GNC, battery, and maintenance teams into supported self-serve tools instead of scripts used only by their original author.
• Generate an internal field guide and data catalog from the warehouse itself to prevent drift between what engineers read and what tables contain, keeping metadata machine-readable for correct interpretation by tooling and agents.
• Develop review and triage surfaces for fleet health alerts, including acknowledgment, history, and trend views alongside existing dashboards and Slack notifications.
• Package and distribute analysis tooling so it runs on an engineer’s laptop, including Windows, without requiring step-by-step environment setup from others.
• Carry work through deployment with tests, code review, CI/CD, and monitoring that helps detect failures.
• Partner with engineering teams to scope needs, and document what you ship so future support is straightforward.

What you bring

• 2+ years of professional experience building and shipping web applications, from backend through front end.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline (or equivalent practical experience).
• Proficiency in Python, plus comfort writing SQL against a real database.
• Experience with a modern JavaScript or TypeScript front-end framework such as React or Vue.
• Experience building and consuming HTTP APIs, including authentication, pagination, and error handling.
• Comfort with Git-based workflows, code review, and CI/CD.
• Ability to sit with a non-software engineer, identify requirements through conversation, and ship solutions since many requirements arrive as a discussion rather than a formal spec.

Preferred and familiar experience

• Preferred: AWS experience, especially S3, Athena, Lambda, or API Gateway.
• Preferred: Experience with large or time-series datasets and methods to keep UIs responsive over millions of rows.
• Preferred: Charting and data visualization work, including Grafana dashboard development.
• Preferred: Docker and infrastructure as code with Terraform.
• Preferred: Building with LLM APIs or agent frameworks, including tool use, retrieval over structured data, and judging whether outputs can be trusted.
• Preferred: Building internal tools for colleague users rather than external customers.
• Familiar with: aerospace, automotive, or robotics telemetry and flight or vehicle test data; packaging desktop or command-line tooling for non-developer users on Windows; authentication and access control for internal apps (SSO, IAM, scoped credentials); regulated or safety-critical environments with traceability and data retention requirements; natural-language or conversational interfaces over structured, time-series, or diagnostic data; and interest in RC planes, quadcopters, or aviation.

Benefits

• Comprehensive benefits package, including medical, dental, vision, and 401k plans.

Core values you’ll work with

• Safety Above All
• Customer Focus
• Work Better Together
• Be the Pilot
• Embrace the Unknown
• Respect for People

Additional details

Onsite requirement: Applicants must be eligible for employment in the United States and willing to work onsite at Pivotal’s HQ office in Palo Alto, CA.

AI in hiring: Pivotal may use AI tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals. These tools assist the recruitment team but do not replace human judgment, and final hiring decisions are made by humans.

Technologies

Python, SQL, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Vue, HTTP APIs, AWS Athena, Amazon S3, Git-based workflows, CI/CD, Windows, Slack notifications.