Senior Data Engineer, (Team Lead)

Senior Data Engineer (Team Lead) 

At Fearless, we are seeking a Senior Data Engineer who will serve as the Fearless Team Lead to support a large federal agency's enterprise data modernization initiative focused on building and operating a secure, cloud-native data platform. The team delivers platform engineering, cloud infrastructure, data engineering, governance, AI/ML capabilities, and customer enablement to help modernize enterprise data services. Rather than supporting a single application, this work builds the shared technology foundation that enables secure, scalable, and data-driven decision-making across the agency. This individual will combine deep technical expertise in Databricks and cloud data platforms with team leadership and consulting responsibilities, serving as both hands-on technical contributor and Fearless team lead for the engagement. This is a fully remote role. 

As a Team Lead, you deliver world-class service within assigned teams, leading to account growth. This role involves providing delivery leadership for one large or up to three small teams within a single project. You will coach and mentor junior team members, sharing the skills and best practices you have developed throughout your experience. Your role is pivotal in ensuring high performance, fostering team development, and driving successful project outcomes that contribute to the growth and reputation of the organization.

Fearless Your Responsibilities in this Role: 

● Own the design and implementation of ingestion architectures that support scalable, reliable data flows into the enterprise data platform. 

● Design and implement data models that balance performance, scalability, and governance requirements across the platform. 

● Lead ETL/ELT development efforts using Databricks, Azure Data Factory, and related tools to transform and deliver data for downstream consumption. 

● Support migration of legacy Corporate Data Warehouse workloads into the cloud-native platform, ensuring data integrity and continuity. 

● Partner with governance and data quality teams to ensure enterprise data solutions align with quality, security, and governance standards. 

● Lead technical design discussions and provide architectural guidance on scalable data engineering solutions, platform standards, and performance optimization. 

● Serve as the Fearless team lead for the program, managing and mentoring Fearless team members and coordinating delivery across workstreams. 

● Act as the primary liaison between the Fearless team and customer leadership, building trusted relationships and ensuring alignment on priorities. 

● Facilitate communication between the Fearless team and Fearless leadership, surfacing risks, needs, and opportunities proactively.  

The Impact You Will Create in this Role: 

Customer & Fearless Impact:

A successful candidate in this role can independently operate with minimal support from their leadership in day-to-day tasks and decision-making. This team lead will impact Fearless’ customers by: 

• Delivering exceptional service, identifying new business opportunities, and maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction.
• Leading teams to consistently meet project milestones, ensuring compliance, quality, and the successful implementation of solutions.
• Cultivating a culture of excellence, ensuring accountability, continuous improvement, and skill development within the team.
• Acting as a strategic advisor to customers and stakeholders, guiding decisions that align with the organization’s mission and long-term goals.
• Ensure that Fearless positively impacts our customers' missions and the lives of the people they serve by consistently delivering world-class products and services on time.

ADD PROJECT SKILL AND EXPERIENCE REQUIREMENTS HERE

● Minimum of 7 years of experience in data engineering, data architecture, or related technical roles. 

● Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Information Systems, or related field, or equivalent work experience. 

● Ability to obtain and maintain Public Trust clearance. 

● Proven hands-on experience with Databricks for data engineering, ETL/ELT development, and data pipeline orchestration. 

● Experience designing and implementing scalable data solutions on cloud data platforms, preferably Azure. 

● Proficiency with SQL, Delta Lake, and data transformation tools such as Azure Data Factory or equivalent. 

● Experience designing enterprise data models and optimizing large-scale data pipelines for performance, scalability, and reliability. 

● Experience partnering directly with customers or business stakeholders to translate technical and business requirements into scalable data solutions. 

● Experience directly managing technical team members, providing coaching and performance feedback in a consulting or client-facing environment. 

● Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional delivery teams and build trusted customer relationships in complex technical programs. 

Preferred Experience 

● Experience supporting federal government, healthcare, or other highly regulated environments with complex data governance, security, and compliance requirements. 

● Experience leading enterprise cloud modernization or large-scale data migration initiatives. 

● Experience leading enterprise data engineering initiatives using modern cloud-native architectures and distributed data platforms. 

Fearless Skills and Competencies

• Communicating with Credibility & Influence: Builds credibility as a subject matter expert within the customer’s organization. Promotes buy-in among organizational stakeholders for initiatives. Motivates staff and other stakeholders to support vision and goals. Serves as an advocate for the organization or team members to advance the organization’s strategic direction and goals. Shares opinions about important issues, regardless of risk or discouragement from others. Promotes the role of their function in achieving the organization’s mission, vision, and goals. Builds credibility for themselves and is Fearless within the customer’s organization as an expert in their field. Serves as an influential voice for strategies, philosophies, and initiatives within the organization. Advocates for the implementation of evidence-based solutions. Inspires staff, customers, and executive-level organizational stakeholders to support and pursue the organization’s strategic direction, vision and long-term goals. Builds consensus among leaders about the organization’s strategic direction and long-term goals. Uses knowledge and skills to influence business strategy.
• Technology Awareness: Wholistic knowledge of technology developments and new applications (hardware, software, telecommunications), emerging technologies and ability to apply to business processes and implementation of information systems to meet organizational requirements.
• Project Management for Gov Contracts: Applies project management principles and practices to plan, execute, and close government projects, ensuring timely delivery, budget adherence, and compliance with federal regulations.
• Account Growth & Retention: Nurtures, grows and maintains existing accounts by monitoring, measuring, and ensuring customer satisfaction; leveraging existing contracts for up-selling and cross-selling opportunities, actively troubleshooting and resolving issues, countering competitive threats, and expanding customer networks and champions.
• Government Procurement Rules, Regulations & Methods: Uses knowledge of contracting officers, acquisition regulations, procurement levels, and government contracting methods—including contract types, IDIQ, GSA schedules, socio-economic categories, and teaming agreements—to identify opportunities and secure funding that align with the organization’s strategic priorities, ensuring successful outcomes for both the organization and its customers.
• Evaluating Business Challenges: Partners with stakeholders to understand current and future challenges, and identify needs and opportunities for improvement. Informs stakeholders about current and future threats and liabilities that jeopardize successful outcomes. Advises stakeholders through collaboration and recommends solutions to ensure attainment of business outcomes and support the organization’s strategic direction and long-term goals.
• Advising on Solutions: Provides guidance to other professionals, managers and business unit teams on implementation of related solutions. Works with business partners to overcome obstacles to implementing solutions. Provides follow-up to and ongoing support for implementation of solutions to ensure their continued effectiveness. Ensures that the implementation of solutions adheres to defined goals and outcomes. Provides ongoing support and solutions to business unit leaders on the organization’s strategic direction. Encourages staff and leaders to provide input on strategic business decisions. Works with leaders to overcome obstacles to implementing initiatives. Integrates solutions with related organizational processes, systems, and other business or management initiatives.
• Stakeholder & Partner Management: Knowledge of the concepts, practices, and techniques used to identify, engage, influence, and monitor relationships with individuals and groups connected to a work effort; including those actively involved, those who exert influence over the process and its results, and those who have a vested interest in the outcome (positive or negative).
• Team Management: Manages the team by analyzing team data (such as forecasts and progress to goals), ensuring achievement of metrics allocating resources and managing budgets attracting, selecting, onboarding, developing, coaching, motivating, promoting and terminating team members. Conducts performance reviews and career planning, removes demotivating factors in the environment, and enhances collective team competencies.
• Focus on Performance:  Ensures high performance standards and accountability across the organization by focusing team on results, ensuring accountability, using metrics to measure performance and operating applying continuing improvement.
• Environmental & Customer Awareness: Maintains awareness of agency and other external dynamics, power structures within client environments as well as functional/domain knowledge, regulatory trends and contract requirements that influence service delivery and company expansion/growth.

Required Level of Proficiency:

• Practical Application: You can complete tasks in required competency/skill-based areas as requested. Help from an expert may be necessary from time to time, but you can usually perform the skill independently.

Physical Requirements:

• Ability to sit for extended periods while working on a computer or during meetings.
• Must be able to travel occasionally to client sites or company meetings, which may involve driving or flying.
• Ability to communicate effectively via phone, email, and in-person, requiring clear speech, listening, and written communication skills.
• Ability to move within an office environment, including reaching for files, using office equipment, and occasional light lifting (up to 10 pounds).

Life at Fearless

We’re a digital integration consultancy on a mission to build a better tomorrow. At Fearless, we combine technology, people, and organizational development to solve meaningful problems. Through iterative development, we deliver smart, user-friendly solutions that make tech work better—for everyone.

But great tech is just part of the story. What really makes us Fearless is our Purple Culture.

What Makes Us Purple?

Being Purple means you:

• Are valued as a whole person—not just a job title
• Get matched with work that plays to your strengths and passions
• Are supported by coaches, not micromanagers
• Have the autonomy and clarity to make decisions and drive impact
• Join a community that celebrates equity, curiosity, and innovation
• Do work that matters—every day

We believe in flexibility, growth, and balance. Our benefits and culture are designed to support you in doing your best work—while making space for what matters to you outside of it.

We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer. At Fearless, we’re building a workplace that welcomes and respects everyone—across race, gender, age, religion, identity, background, and ability. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Compensation at Fearless

Fearless is committed to providing a competitive compensation package that will meet your current and future needs. Our philosophy is aimed at rewarding team member contributions, supporting long-term financial growth and security, and overall well-being. 

We believe in paying people fairly, so we've established a compensation model aimed to ensure everyone at Fearless — regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, religion, age, nationality, or willingness/ability to negotiate — is consistently paid fairly based on alignment to the needs and requirements of the role. 

The salary range for this position is:

Minimum Salary: $120,588

Salary Midpoint: $156,764

Maximum Salary: $195,955

Hiring Range for Role: $120,588 - $142,000

*This position is eligible for a discretionary bonus based on individual and company performance criteria.

Benefits at Fearless

At Fearless, we take care of our team—because when you're supported, you can do your best work. We offer a flexible, family-friendly environment with benefits designed to support your health, growth, and life outside of work.

For Full-Time Team Members (Starting Day One):

• Flexible, life-friendly schedules
• 100% coverage for our medical HSA plan + HSA contributions
• Dental & vision covered 100% for you and your dependents
• Competitive premiums for HMO/PPO and dependent coverage
• 401(k) with 4% match & immediate vesting
• Paid Parental Leave and 12 weeks paid FMLA
• Generous PTO, 11 Federal Holidays, a Birthday Holiday, and Sick Leave
• Up to 15 days for Jury Duty and Bereavement Leave
• Education, wellness, and tech allowances
• Referral bonus: $6K–$12K for each successful referral
• Pet insurance & discount plans
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• Legal support, life insurance, disability coverage
• Performance-Based Bonuses: We believe your impact should be recognized. Our bonus program rewards both shared company success and individual contributions. Learn more about our bonus incentives here.

Reasonable Accommodations

Fearless is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for applicants and candidates with disabilities. If a reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, please contact the Human Resources Department at hr@fearless.tech.

So, What’s Next?

We’ve refined our hiring approach to make sure every team member is a great fit for Fearless—and that we’re a great fit for you, too. If there’s alignment, we’ll reach out to kick off the interview process. Depending on the role or project, your experience may vary slightly, but it typically includes:

1. Introductory Interview

You'll connect with a recruiter to:

• Build rapport and get to know each other
• Review your experience and skills
• Talk through salary expectations and role details
• Set expectations for the rest of the process

2. Technical Assessment

We'll invite you to complete a role-specific assessment to see your skills in action. This helps us keep our hiring process fair and consistent. You can learn more about what to expect here.

3. Skills + Business Fit Interview

This is where we dig deeper to:

• Review findings from any technical assessments
• Walk through situational and values-based questions
• Explore how your approach aligns with Fearless culture and project needs

Some roles may also include customer interviews based on specific project requirements in addition to background check and security clearance requirements.

Where You Can Build with Fearless

At Fearless, we strive to build a powerful and diverse team. We are currently licensed and set up to hire talented individuals residing in the following 15 states:

Alabama, California, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

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