About the Role
Title: Senior/Staff Data Engineer
Location: Santa Barbara United States
Department: Software
Employment Type: Full-Time
Minimum Experience: Experienced
Compensation: $180,000 – $200,000
Job Description:
Umbra builds next-generation space systems that observe the Earth in unprecedented fidelity.
Our mission: Deliver global omniscience.
To stay ahead of climate change, geopolitical risk, and other major crises and issues, we need a global understanding of what is changing, where, and how fast. Umbra provides easy access to the highest quality commercial satellite data available, which is an indispensable tool for the growing number of organizations monitoring the Earth. We empower our customers to create the solutions that inform, inspire, and address our planet’s most pressing needs. We’re helping to create a brand new industry that has never meaningfully existed before.
We are looking for a Senior/Staff Data Engineer to spearhead our data infrastructure architecture. This role involves collaborating with product owners and diverse engineering teams to design, develop, and maintain the data systems that underpin our autonomous satellite operations. As an early contributor, you will be instrumental in Umbra’s mission to transform the way space radar data is utilized.
This position is Remote unless you reside near Santa Barbara, CA or Arlington, VA — in those cases it may be Hybrid.
Key Responsibilities
- Design, build, and maintain scalable data pipelines and infrastructure for processing and analyzing large volumes of satellite data.
- Develop and optimize data models, data warehouses, and data lakes to support internal analytics and machine learning applications.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams to understand data requirements and ensure high standards of data quality, reliability, and performance.
- Implement best practices for data governance, security, and compliance.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
- 15+ years of professional experience as a Data Engineer or in similar roles.
- Strong proficiency in SQL and familiarity with data warehousing concepts and technologies.
- Experience with big data processing frameworks such as Apache Spark, Hadoop, or Flink.
- Proficient in developing data pipelines using Python or Scala.
- Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) for data storage and processing.
- Proficiency with data visualization tools such as Grafana, Power BI, or Tableau.
- Familiarity with monitoring solutions like Datadog, Prometheus, New Relic, or Splunk.
- Strong communication skills, ability to work collaboratively, and a willingness to learn new technologies.
- Current security clearance or the ability to obtain one.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in the aerospace industry.
- Familiarity with mission scheduling software or schedule optimization.
- Experience in developing image processing or formation applications.
- Knowledge of building custom GIS applications, STAC, or imagery catalog APIs.
- Experience with streaming data processing and real-time analytics.
- Understanding of data visualization tools and techniques.
- Familiarity with machine learning concepts and libraries like TensorFlow or PyTorch.
- Experience with data versioning and lineage tracking tools such as DVC or MLflow.