Senior Data Engineer

Orijin is on a mission to prepare every justice-impacted individual for sustainable employment. We are a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) and certified B-Corporation, with a business model that never charges incarcerated individuals or their friends and families for its technology or services. (https://orijin.works)The OpportunityAs a Senior Data Engineer at Orijin, you will be a technical leader responsible for building, scaling, and modernizing the company’s data platform. Your primary focus will be on data modeling, pipelines, architecture, reliability, and performance, ensuring that data is trusted, timely, and production-ready.You will partner closely with data analysts, engineers and product managers to shape how data is modeled and used. You will bring an analytical mindset to pipeline design and enable high-quality insights across the organization. You will ensure company-wide confidence in data quality and enable data-enabled differentiating products and services.Job RequirementsData Platform & Architecture LeadershipDesign and evolve Orijin’s data architecture to support scalability, reliability, and near-real-time use casesDefine standards for data modeling, orchestration, versioning, and deploymentLead efforts around data governance, security, lineage, and compliance in partnership with stakeholdersDrive the transition toward modern data stack best practices (event-driven ingestion and streaming where appropriate)Data Engineering & Pipeline Ownership Own the design, build, and maintenance of production-grade data pipelines across batch and streaming workloadsBuild systems that support:Monitoring, alerting, and observability for data pipelines Backfills re-runs, and safe rollbacks when failures or data issues occur High data quality and reliability through automated checks and validationOptimize pipelines for performance, cost efficiency, and scalabilityLead the move toward near real-time data processing where it delivers business valueTooling & Infrastructure Architect and maintain data systems using tools such as:AWS (S3, RDS, Redshift, Lambda, DMS, Glue etc.)Data orchestration and ETL tools like Airflow, Airbyte and dbtImprove CI/CD for data workflows, including testing, deployment, and environment managementEvaluate and introduce new tooling for orchestration, monitoring, and data quality as the platform maturesML & AI Enablement Design build, and operate data and feature pipelines that support machine learning and AI-driven product features, including training, evaluation, inference, monitoring, and safe rollout to downstream systemsSupport vectorization and embedding workflows, including generation, storage, refresh, and backfill of embeddingsPartner with team stakeholders to translate model requirements into scalable, reliable data systemsContribute to early experimentation and prototyping of ML-powered features. Analytics Enablement & CollaborationPartner with analysts and product teams to ensure pipelines and data models support meaningful analysis and reportingProvide architectural input on metrics design, data models, and semantic layersEnable self-service analytics by ensuring clean, well-documented, and accessible datasetsBasic proficiency in data visualization platforms with demonstrated ability to build and maintain data dashboardsContribute to exploratory analysis or metric definition when deeper engineering context is requiredEfficiency & Reliability Focus Continuously improve:Query performanceStorage and compute costsPipeline runtime and failure ratesLead incident response for data outages and quality issues, including root-cause analysis and permanent fixesEstablish SLAs and reliability standards for critical data assetsQualificationsBachelor’s or advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or equivalent work experienceExpertise in the areas of data engineering, platform engineering, or backend engineering rolesProven experience designing and operating large-scale data pipelines and data platforms in production enviromentsStrong proficiency in Python and SQL for data engineering workflowsHands-on experience with AWS data tools like Redshift, Lambda and Glue or equivalents; experience with data orchestration and ETL tools like Airflow, Airbyte and dbt in production enviromentsExperience implementing monitoring, alerting, and data quality frameworksFamilarity with streaming or near-real-time systems (e.g., Kafka, Kinesis, or similar) is a plusHands on experience with PostgreSQL databases and NoSQL style databases like MongoDB, DynamoDB, etcExperience supporting machine learning or AI workflows (e.g., feature engineering, embedding pipelines, model inputs/outputs, embeddings, vector databases)Strong collaboration and communication skills - able to translate business and analytical needs into robust technical systemsExperience with data governance, security, and compliance in regulated or sensitive-data environmentsEqual Opportunity Employer :Orijin is an Equal Opportunity Employer and firmly believes in creating a workplace that respects and values diversity of cultural, ethnic, and experiential backgrounds. We encourage all qualified applicants to apply. As an organization committed to the successful reentry of justice-involved persons, we strongly encourage candidates who share the life experiences of the citizens we serve to applyDisclaimer: The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by the individual assigned to this position. They are not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities, and skills required. Job duties may change or new duties assigned at any time with or without noticeWe may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.Salary And BenefitsOrijin offers competitive compensation commensurate and a generous 100% employer-paid benefits package for you and your dependentsFully remote with option to work in person in NYC office. Occasional travel as needed and the ability to work EST.