Principal Data Engineer/Sr. Principal Data Engineer
Quick Summary
Principal Data Engineer: Bachelor’s degree with 4 years of technical and/or engineering experience, or a Master’s degree with 3 years of engineering experience,
Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems (NGAS) has an opening for a Principal Data Engineer or Sr. Principal Data Engineer to join our team of qualified, diverse individuals. The position requires on-site support located in Palmdale, CA and can also be filled in El Segundo CA where technology and teamwork come together. The selected candidate will become part of Northrop Grumman’s Data Science Engineering Team working in a collaborative environment while promoting a positive and proactive teamwork environment.
- Establish repositories, data models, and integration patterns for manufacturing data and the technical context required to support digitized processes
- Define the architecture, processes, and interfaces through which engineering and manufacturing teams provide, validate, relate, and maintain contextual data
- Align adjacent and independently managed data structures through authoritative sources, shared identifiers, mappings, semantics, relationships, and traceability
- Design resilient pipelines and data services that integrate manufacturing measurement, equipment, sensor, process, product-location, quality, engineering, and enterprise-system data
- Set technical direction for greenfield manufacturing-data solutions and communicate strategy, alternatives, risks, dependencies, and outcomes to senior leaders and technical stakeholders
Requirements
~5 min read- Bachelor’s degree with 4 years of technical and/or engineering experience, or a Master’s degree with 3 years of engineering experience, or PhD with 0 years of experience
- Ability to work 1st shift "5am-3:30pm" or 2nd shift "4:12pm-2:42am" and/or any work schedule (times may vary)
- Advanced experience using SQL, programming or automation, and relational data modeling to deliver production data products, applications, or platforms
- Experience defining and owning data architecture, including repositories, schemas, interfaces, integration patterns, metadata, lineage, data quality, and maintainability
- Demonstrated success delivering greenfield data solutions where platforms, standards, requirements, data contracts, or system endpoints were incomplete or did not exist
- Experience designing pipelines and integration approaches for complex data from multiple independently managed sources
- Experience establishing technical direction for ambiguous data problems and driving alignment across technical and operational stakeholders
- Ability to communicate architecture, performance, risks, dependencies, and tradeoffs to senior managers and technical stakeholders
- This position requires the ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government Secret or Top-Secret Clearance as well as Program Special access within a reasonable period, as determined by the company to meet its business needs
- Ability to work for extended periods of time at a workstation on a computer or similar device for up to 10 hours / duration of shift. Occasional extended periods of standing, bending, kneeling
- Ability to travel at least 10%
- Bachelor’s degree with 8 years of engineering experience, or a Master’s degree with 6 years of engineering experience, or PhD with 4 years of engineering experience
- Ability to work 1st shift "5am-3:30pm" or 2nd shift "4:12pm-2:42am" and/or any work schedule (times may vary)
- Advanced experience using SQL, programming or automation, and relational data modeling to deliver production data products, applications, or platforms
- Experience defining and owning data architecture, including repositories, schemas, interfaces, integration patterns, metadata, lineage, data quality, and maintainability
- Demonstrated success delivering greenfield data solutions where platforms, standards, requirements, data contracts, or system endpoints were incomplete or did not exist
- Experience designing pipelines and integration approaches for complex data from multiple independently managed sources
- Experience establishing technical direction for ambiguous data problems and driving alignment across technical and operational stakeholders
- Ability to communicate architecture, performance, risks, dependencies, and tradeoffs to senior managers and technical stakeholders
- This position requires the ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government Secret or Top-Secret Clearance as well as Program Special access within a reasonable period, as determined by the company to meet its business needs
- Ability to work for extended periods of time at a workstation on a computer or similar device for up to 10 hours / duration of shift. Occasional extended periods of standing, bending, kneeling
- Ability to travel at least 10%
- STEM degree in a related field
- Experience establishing data architecture across manufacturing measurement, equipment, sensor, process, product, quality, engineering, program, and enterprise-system domains
- Experience aligning independently managed structures through authoritative sources, shared identifiers, mappings, semantic models, relationships, stewardship, and traceability
- Experience designing scalable approaches for high-volume, high-frequency, time-dependent, spatial, or otherwise complex technical data
- Experience developing data services, APIs, or application interfaces that allow domain teams to provide and maintain contextual data
- Experience with Python, Microsoft SQL Server, Apache Airflow, Git-based development, automated testing, CI/CD, monitoring, or production operations. Python and Airflow are preferred because they align with the current team and infrastructure, but comparable programming and orchestration experience is acceptable
- Experience incorporating relevant information from engineering documents, work instructions, or other unstructured technical sources without making document parsing the primary solution focus.
- Experience leading architecture reviews, mentoring technical contributors, and raising data-engineering maturity across an organization
- Experience partnering with enterprise organizations while independently defining and advancing local manufacturing-data needs when enterprise support or platforms are immature
- Active U.S. Government Secret or higher security clearance
Location & Eligibility
About this job
- Pay per year
- $114,000–$171,000 a year
- 10% below the $159,120 median for Data Engineer jobs on Jobera (686 salaries).
- Posted
- 5 days ago
Listing Details
- Posted
- October 29, 2026
- First seen
- October 29, 2026
- Last seen
- November 3, 2026
Posting Health
- Days active
- 4
- Repost count
- 0
- Trust Level
- 39%
- Scored at
- November 3, 2026
Signal breakdown
4 other jobs at
View all →Stay ahead of the market
Get the latest job openings, salary trends, and hiring insights delivered to your inbox every week.
No spam. Unsubscribe at any time.