Forward Deployed Data Engineer
Key Skills for This Role
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The Role
We're looking for a Forward Deployed Data Engineer to embed with Department of Defense and Intelligence Community customers and take ownership of the data pipelines running inside their Palantir Foundry-based Maven Smart System (MSS) workspaces. Instead of building at arm's length, you'll work onsite alongside each customer's own engineers and analysts, turn raw and often messy source data into clean, well-modeled pipelines, and adjust your approach as mission needs shift. You'll support multiple active contracts across the country, so the specific site changes as priorities do.
This is a hands-on role for someone who wants their pipelines running in a live operational environment, not sitting in a staging system, and who is comfortable owning a customer's data infrastructure from the first scoping conversation through to a production deployment they stand behind.
Core Responsibilities
- Partner directly with the customer's engineers and analysts on how data should flow, be modeled, and be structured inside their Foundry workspace.
- Design, build, and maintain ETL pipelines that acquire, clean, transform, and load data into Foundry, including Ontology object types and the links between them.
- Work hands-on inside Palantir Foundry, using tools such as Pipeline Builder and Code Repositories or Code Workbooks, to move pipelines from a first working version to something the customer relies on in production.
- Diagnose and resolve data quality, schema, and performance problems in large, messy, real-world datasets, where the clean assumptions of a textbook pipeline rarely hold.
- Own the day-to-day relationship with onsite technical stakeholders, translating evolving mission requirements into working data pipelines without waiting on a lengthy spec.
- Document pipeline architecture and data lineage so the customer's team, and WarFighter AI's own engineering team, can maintain and extend what you've built.
- Bring patterns and lessons learned back to WarFighter AI's engineering team so they can be reused on future customer deployments.
What We Value
• Ownership. You treat the customer's data problem as your own until it's actually solved, not just until your assigned piece is done.
• Comfort with ambiguity. Mission requirements shift, users push back, and the right design isn't always clear on day one. You iterate rather than wait for certainty.
• Initiative. You make decisions with incomplete information and keep moving, rather than waiting to be told what to do next.
• A genuine pull toward hard technical problems: data modeling, pipeline performance, storage, and the other unglamorous work that makes a system actually reliable.
• Willingness to work embedded, in person, at the customer's site, including inside a SCIF when required.
• The ability to work well with both technical counterparts and non-technical government stakeholders, and to explain what you're doing and why to both.
What We Require
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent hands-on experience.
• 3+ years of relevant experience in data engineering, ETL development, or data analysis.
• Hands-on, production experience building data pipelines in Palantir Foundry, including Pipeline Builder, Code Repositories or Code Workbooks, and the Ontology.
• Proficiency in SQL and Python (or a similar language) for data transformation and pipeline development.
• U.S. citizenship and residence inside the United States.
• This is a hybrid role supporting customer sites across the country. Candidates can live anywhere in the United States but must be willing to work onsite and travel up to 75% of the time to support active contracts across multiple customer environments.
Required
• Active TS//SCI security clearance eligibility.
Nice to Have
• Palantir Foundry certification(s), if held.
• Cloud or data platform certifications (for example AWS or Databricks).
• Security+ or a comparable IT security certification.
Compensation and Benefits
- Salary: $160,000 to $195,000 USD depending on experience and clearance status.
- Health, dental, and vision insurance (employee coverage).
- 401(k) retirement plan with employer contributions.
- 20 days of paid time off (PTO) per year.
Interview Process
Our interview process typically includes an initial conversation with our talent team, a technical and leadership interview, a practical exercise or case study, and a final conversation with company leadership. We aim to move quickly and keep candidates informed throughout.
WarFighter AI is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.
About the Company
Warfighter AI is a Wartime Company. That means we build for Warfighters in competition and conflict. Our mission is to make the Warfighter more capable and lethal. Every day, everything we do enables that mission.
About Warfighter AI, LLC
Warfighter AI is a private defense data-infrastructure company delivering integrated intelligence fusion and targeting capabilities to warfighters.
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