Associate Data Engineer

Candid

Associate Data Engineer managing ingestion and transformation pipelines at Candid, a nonprofit providing data insights for the social sector. Developing foundational skills across the modern data lakehouse stack.

Posted 4/29/2026full-time🇺🇸 United StatesJuniorMid-Level💰 $70,000 - $95,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AirflowApacheAWSCloudMS SQL ServerPythonSQLSSIS

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Serve as the primary owner of ingestion pipelines and transformation table adjustments
Ensure continued, reliable data delivery and apply routine changes as business and schema needs evolve
Validate transformation outputs against expected results after schema or structural changes, documenting findings and escalating anomalies to the appropriate teams
Assist with scheduling compaction and cleanup jobs to maintain Iceberg table health and query performance
Support partition evolution and snapshot retention management to control storage growth
Assist in implementing and maintaining CloudWatch metrics, alarms, and dashboards to ensure pipeline visibility
Contribute to tracking and reporting on platform performance metrics
Help maintain AWS Glue metadata refresh and statistics jobs that support query planning and optimization within the data platform
Assist with coordinating schema changes across ingestion and transformation layers to maintain consistency end to end
Collaborate with the Data Operations Engineer to communicate impacts and sequence changes safely
Support and maintain RBAC and ABAC (least privilege, standardized roles, and consistent tagging)
Participate in access reviews and audits, documenting changes and escalating risks as needed

Requirements

What you’ll need

1–3 years of experience in data engineering, analytics engineering, or a closely related technical role; internships and relevant academic project work considered
Solid SQL skills, including writing, reading, and debugging queries against relational or columnar data stores
Familiarity with cloud data concepts: object storage (Amazon S3), columnar file formats (i.e. Parquet), data-interchange formats (JSON, XML), or open table formats (i.e. Apache Iceberg)
Experience with or exposure to distributed SQL query engines such as Trino or Starburst
Familiarity with AWS services such as S3 and Glue
Exposure to Apache Airflow, SSIS or another workflow orchestration platform
Experience writing or maintaining data pipelines in Python
Familiarity with on-prem relational data systems (i.e. Microsoft SQL Server)
Strong attention to detail, especially around data validation and output accuracy
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
Excellent written and verbal communication skills; ability to document findings clearly for both technical and non-technical audiences
Ability to work independently and collaboratively as part of a distributed team
Willingness to perform other duties and special projects as needed/requested
Sensitivity and respect for racial, gender, sexual orientation, and cultural differences

Benefits

Comp & perks

Health insurance (medical, dental, vision)
Retirement contribution with additional option for a match
Paid life insurance and AD&D
Paid leave time (PTO, compassionate leave, volunteer, holiday, parental)
Short-term and long-term disability
Pre-tax transit
Flexible spending accounts
Supplemental insurance
Summer hours
Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program eligible employer

ATS Keywords

✓ Tailor your resume

Applicant Tracking System Keywords

Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.

Hard Skills & Tools

SQLPythondata engineeringanalytics engineeringdata validationdata pipelinesdata transformationworkflow orchestrationdistributed SQL query enginescloud data concepts

Soft Skills

attention to detailanalytical skillsproblem-solving skillswritten communicationverbal communicationcollaborationindependencesensitivityrespect for diversity