The CDC Foundation helps the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) save and improve lives by unleashing the power of collaboration between CDC, philanthropies, corporations, organizations and individuals to protect the health, safety and security of America and the world. The CDC Foundation is the go-to nonprofit authorized by Congress to mobilize philanthropic partners and private-sector resources to support CDC’s critical health protection mission. Since 1995, the CDC Foundation has raised over $1.9 billion and launched more than 1,300 programs impacting a variety of health threats from chronic disease conditions including cardiovascular disease and cancer, to infectious diseases like rotavirus and HIV, to emergency responses, including COVID-19 and Ebola. The CDC Foundation managed hundreds of programs in the United States and in more than 90 countries last year. Visit www.cdcfoundation.org for more information.  

Job Highlights

• Location: Remote, must be based in the United States
• Salary Range: $115,000-$165,000, plus benefits
• Position Type: Grant funded, limited-term opportunity
• Position End Date: June 30, 2025 

Overview

• The Senior Data Engineer will play a crucial role in advancing the CDC Foundation's mission by designing, building, and maintaining data infrastructure. Working within the Informatics Unit at the Great Plains Tribal Epidemiology Center (GPTEC), the public health authority subsidiary of the Great Plains Tribal Leaders Health Board (GPTLHB), the Senior Data Engineer will deliver the architecture needed for data receipt, generation, storage, processing, analysis, and secure transfer to Tribal Leaders and trusted community members. The Senior Data Engineer will collaborate with data content experts, analysts, data scientists, data modelers, warehouse architects, IT staff, and other organization staff to design and implement proposed solutions and architectures that meet the needs of GPTEC. GPTEC aims to create a comprehensive, user-friendly public health database for its 18 tribal communities. Data obtained from multiple sources – such as tribal programs, state health departments, and the Indian Health Service, among others – is cleaned, partitioned, analyzed, and distributed to tribal public health departments to be used to inform public health activities. Ensuring the successful construction of GPTEC’s data infrastructure is the key goal of the Senior Data Engineer. The Senior Data Engineer’s activities support the goal of GPTEC to fully exercise public health authority broadly among the State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial (STLT) ecosystem, and locally at the direction of its member tribes, for the practice of conducting public health investigations, carrying out interventions, providing surveillance and tracking services, and performing epidemiological analysis, visualizations, and reporting. The Senior Data Engineer will be hired by the CDC Foundation aligned to the Workforce Acceleration Initiative (WAI) and assigned to the Informatics Unit of GPTEC. They will work closely with GPTEC and WAI staff to complete GPTEC goals. This position is eligible for a fully remote work arrangement for U.S. based candidates.

Responsibilities

• Create and manage the systems and pipelines that enable efficient and reliable flow of data, including ingestion, processing, storage, and security.
• Collect or extract data from various sources, transforming and cleaning data to ensure accuracy and consistency. Load data into storage systems or data warehouses.
• Optimize data pipelines, infrastructure, and workflows for performance and scalability.
• Monitor data pipelines and systems for performance issues, errors, and anomalies, and implement solutions to address them.
• Implement security measures to protect sensitive information.
• Collaborate with data scientists, analysts, and other partners to understand their data needs and requirements, and to ensure that the data infrastructure supports the organization's goals and objectives.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to understand data requirements and design scalable solutions that meet business needs.
• Implement and maintain ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes to ensure the accuracy, completeness, and consistency of data.
• Design and manage data storage systems, including relational databases, NoSQL databases, and data warehouses.
• Remain knowledgeable about industry trends, best practices, and emerging technologies in data engineering, and incorporate the trends into the organization's data infrastructure.
• Provide technical guidance to other staff.
• Communicate effectively with partners at all levels of the organization to gather requirements, provide updates, and present findings.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Data Science, or a related field. Master’s or PhD in related field (ex: MPH) preferred, but not required.
• Minimum of 5 years of related experience preferred.
• Proficiency in programming languages commonly used in data engineering, such as Python, Java, Scala, or SQL. Candidate should be able to implement data automations within existing frameworks as opposed to writing one off scripts.
• Experience with big data technologies and frameworks like Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, and Flink.
• Strong understanding of database systems, including relational databases (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL) and NoSQL databases (e.g., MongoDB, Cassandra).
• Experience regarding engineering best practices such as source control, automated testing, continuous integration and deployment, and peer review.
• Knowledge of data warehousing concepts and tools.
• Experience with cloud computing platforms.
• Expertise in data modeling, ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes, and data integration techniques.
• Familiarity with agile development methodologies, software design patterns, and best practices.
• Strong analytical thinking and problem-solving abilities.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to convey technical concepts to non-technical partners effectively.
• Flexibility to adapt to evolving project requirements and priorities.
• Outstanding interpersonal and teamwork skills; and the ability to develop productive working relationships with colleagues and partners.
• Experience working in a virtual environment with remote partners and teams
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office.

Special Notes

• This role is involved in a dynamic public health program. As such, roles and responsibilities are subject to change as situations evolve. Roles and responsibilities listed above may be expanded upon or updated to match priorities and needs, once written approval is received by the CDC Foundation, in order to best support the public health programming.