[Remote] Sr Data Engineer I

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Principal Financial Group is a leader in financial services, dedicated to making financial security accessible to all. They are seeking a Senior Data Engineer I to join their Retirement Modernization Data Enablement team, where the role focuses on designing and delivering data pipelines and products to ensure trusted and well-governed data for analytics and reporting.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain scalable data pipelines and systems across multiple platforms supporting the full data lifecycle, from ingestion and transformation to analytics-ready datasets
• Deliver high-quality, reliable data solutions by applying best practices in version control, testing, monitoring, and proactively addressing data quality issues, performance bottlenecks, and technical debt
• Partner with upstream and downstream teams and contribute to technical design discussions to ensure data is effectively modeled, governed, and delivered
• Apply security policies and standards during development and support risk mitigation efforts
• Create and maintain documentation while collaborating with team members through code reviews, pairing, and knowledge sharing

Skills

• Bachelor's degree plus 6+ years related work experience or a Master's in related field plus 2+ years related work experience
• Proven experience delivering data engineering solutions, including data ingestion, transformation, modeling, and storage to support analytics, reporting, and advanced data use cases, with exposure to data mesh principles in modern data platform environments
• Demonstrated ability to shape data architecture and influence technical strategy across teams, establishing patterns, standards, and best practices
• Trusted technical leader with strong communication and collaboration skills who can influence across teams and business units and navigate ambiguity in modernizing data environments
• Experience elevating the people around you; coaching, mentoring, and helping others grow through thoughtful feedback and knowledge sharing
• Proven experience working across the full data lifecycle, from source-aligned ingestion and foundational data preparation through to analytics-ready datasets, with an understanding of how upstream design decisions enable downstream analytics and data products
• Strong technical foundation working hands-on with data and data stores, including SQL, and with data pipeline development
• Experience optimizing data pipelines and processing systems for high-volume, complex datasets
• Experience implementing data quality management across the data lifecycle, including validation, reconciliation, and mastering, with an emphasis on observability, monitoring, and operational readiness
• Experience with modern enterprise data platforms (e.g., Snowflake)
• Familiarity with data quality tools and practices (e.g., Ataccama)
• Experience with data integration tools (e.g., AWS Glue, Fivetran, Informatica IDMC)
• Experience with transactional/source system data modeling (e.g., 3NF)
• Experience with monitoring, observability, and pipeline reliability

Benefits

• Non-sales positions have the opportunity to participate in a bonus program.
• Sales positions are eligible for sales incentives, and in some instances a bonus plan, whereby total compensation may far exceed base salary depending on individual performance.
• Flexible Time Off (FTO) is provided to salaried (exempt) employees and provides the opportunity to take time away from the office with pay for vacation, personal or short-term illness.
• Employees don’t accrue a bank of time off under FTO and there is no set number of days provided.
• Pension Eligible
• This role offers in-office, hybrid (blending at least three office days in a typical workweek), and remote work arrangements (only if residing more than 30 miles from Des Moines, IA, or Charlotte, NC).
• At Principal, we value connecting on both a personal and professional level. Together, we’re imagining a more purpose-led future for financial services – and that starts with you. Our success depends on the unique experiences, backgrounds, and talents of our employees. And we support our employees the same way we support our customers: with comprehensive, competitive benefit offerings crafted to protect their physical, financial, and social well-being.

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