Database Engineer

Overview:

BigBear.ai is hiring Data Engineers to build and maintain the source adapters and normalization logic that translate raw data from disparate systems into a common risk-signal schema. This position focuses on reliable ingestion and transformation—turning heterogeneous legacy inputs (APIs, feeds, databases, files, and event streams) into consistent, high-quality signals that downstream scoring and adjudication workflows can trust.

This position is remote but may require travel in the DMV area.

What you will do:

• Build source adapters/connectors to ingest data from APIs, legacy systems, databases, and event streams

• Develop normalization and mapping logic to translate source-specific fields into the common risk-signal schema (including validation, enrichment, and standardization)

• Implement ETL/ELT pipelines with strong engineering rigor: testing, observability, error handling, retries, and backfills

• Produce and consume streaming events (e.g., Kafka topics) to support near-real-time signal delivery and downstream processing

• Partner with data architecture and domain SMEs to define and maintain data contracts, mappings, and lineage from source to normalized signal

• Ensure data quality and consistency (deduplication patterns, schema evolution handling, and reconciliation against source systems)

• Optimize pipeline performance and reliability (throughput, latency, and scalable processing patterns)

• Create and maintain technical documentation for adapters, transformations, and operational runbooks

• Some travel may be required within the DMV area

What you need to have:

• Clearance: Must maintain an active Top Secret security clearance

• Bachelor's Degree and 8 to 10 years of experience; Master's Degree and 6 to 8 years of experience

• 3–5 years of experience in data engineering, including building production-grade ingestion and transformation pipelines.

• Strong experience with API integrations and ETL/ELT development in complex environments.

• Experience integrating heterogeneous and/or legacy systems with inconsistent schemas and data quality.

• Experience with REST/API frameworks and building maintainable, well-tested integration services.

What we'd like you to have:

• Engineering discipline: writes maintainable, testable code and builds robust pipelines that handle edge cases.

• Curiosity and persistence: digs into messy source data and drives it to consistent outcomes.

• Collaboration: works effectively across data architecture, scoring/analytics, and application teams.

• Operational mindset: builds pipelines that are observable, debuggable, and supportable in production.

• Solid SQL skills and working familiarity with NoSQL data stores.

• Proficiency in Python or Java for building data services and transformation logic.

• Hands-on experience producing/consuming events in Kafka (producers/consumers) or an equivalent event streaming platform

Tools & Technical Skills

• AWS Certification – Data Engineer

• Graph Database experience

• SQL and NoSQL databases

• AWS DMS (Database Migration Service)

About BigBear.ai:

BigBear.ai is a leading provider of AI-powered decision intelligence solutions for national security, supply chain management, and digital identity. Customers and partners rely on Bigbear.ai’s predictive analytics capabilities in highly complex, distributed, mission-based operating environments. Headquartered in McLean, Virginia, BigBear.ai is a public company traded on the NYSE under the symbol BBAI. For more information, visit https://bigbear.ai/ and follow BigBear.ai on LinkedIn: @BigBear.ai and X: @BigBearai.

BigBear.ai is an Equal opportunity employer all protected groups, including protected veterans and individuals with disabilities.