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We enable rapid analysis and management of the world’s largest datasets.
The Role
The Data Engineer II supports customer workload onboarding through requirements gathering, query conversion, schema design, metadata analysis, data loading, workload testing, and performance analysis. The role collaborates with Solutions Architects and engineering teams to prepare pre-pilot workloads, create validation assets and technical documentation, assist with system sizing and timelines, and contribute to GDPR and data rolloff procedures.
Summary Generated by Built In
About Ocient:
Ocient is building OcientAIQ™ – a complete ecosystem for delivering trusted agentic AI solutions at petabyte scale, for the organizations that can't afford to get AI wrong. Our customers protect networks, secure nations, and power the global economy. The problems we solve are genuinely hard, and the work matters.
Founded in 2016 by the team that built Cleversafe (acquired by IBM in 2015), Ocient is headquartered in Chicago with a remote-first global team. We are a carbon-neutral company backed by leading investors including Greycroft, OCA Ventures, In-Q-Tel, and Buoyant Ventures.
Job Title: Data Engineer II
Location: 100% Remote (US Based Only)
- We cannot sponsor or transfer any visas, of any kind, at this time*
Hiring Manager: Senior Director of Data Engineering
Estimated salary range: $110,000 to $185,000
- The salary offered for this position will be based on a candidate’s experience and skill demonstrated during interviews and other evaluations
Position Overview:
The Data Engineer II independently contributes to data engineering workstreams at Ocient, supporting customer workload onboarding, schema design, query conversion, data loading, and pre-pilot workload testing with growing technical depth and autonomy. This role works closely with Solutions Architects and Senior Data Engineers to deliver high-quality pre-pilot engineering outputs and developing customer solutions, applying growing expertise in Ocient’s SQL data platform, metadata analysis tooling, and workload performance analysis. The Data Engineer II is technically rigorous, collaborative, and developing the deep engineering skills that define Ocient’s customer-facing data engineering excellence.
Responsibilities:
- Work with Solutions Architects to understand customer workloads, capture requirements through questionnaires and workshops, and obtain sample queries and data where possible.
- Convert customer queries to Ocient syntax using internal tools and perform metadata analysis to understand field types, relationships, multi-dimensional elements, and changing schemas.
- Analyze queries in bulk to understand indexing schemes and refine schema; define initial schema designs for pre-pilot workload preparation.
- Load data, create workload test suites, and deploy end-to-end sample workloads to run initial pre-pilot tests.
- Build test cases and validation assets for Delivery and Development teams, and create artifacts in GitHub and other repositories.
- Assist with system sizing, delivery timeline development, and GDPR and data rolloff procedure definition.
- Report performance results and status to management and contribute to cross-functional workload documentation.
Ideal Qualifications:
- 2+ years of experience in data engineering, database engineering, or a related technical role with demonstrated SQL proficiency and data pipeline experience.
- Demonstrated experience contributing to schema design, data loading, and workload testing in a data warehousing or analytics environment.
- Strong SQL proficiency with the ability to write, convert, and optimize queries in large-scale analytical database environments.
- Working knowledge of schema design, indexing strategy, ETL/ELT processes, and data loading in relational or columnar database systems.
- Familiarity with metadata analysis, query bulk analysis, and workload performance testing.
- Strong attention to detail with the ability to independently produce accurate technical documentation and engineering artifacts.
- Good written and verbal communication skills with the ability to collaborate cross-functionally with Solutions Architects, Delivery, and Engineering teams.
An Exceptional Candidate Will Have:
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical field.
- Experience with Big Data platforms, distributed database systems, or cloud data warehousing (AWS Redshift, Google BigQuery, Snowflake, or comparable).
- Familiarity with GDPR data compliance, HA/DR requirements, or data governance processes.
- Experience with GitHub or comparable version control and artifact repository tools.
Interview Requirements: All interviews are conducted via video and require candidates to have their camera on for the duration of the session. The use of video filters, face-altering effects, or virtual backgrounds is not permitted for security and verification purposes.
We are not open to using an agency or staffing company at this time. We do not accept unsolicited agency or staffing resumes and we are not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.
Ocient is an equal employment opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, creed, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy status), sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin or ancestry, ethnicity, citizenship status, age, physical or mental disability, veteran status, marital status, parental status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, please contact [email protected] for more information.
All official Ocient job postings and recruiting communications will come directly from our team via our Careers page, LinkedIn, or from an ocient.com email address. If you receive communication about a role from any other source, please treat it with caution and direct questions to [email protected].
Skills Required
- 2+ years of experience in data engineering, database engineering, or a related technical role
- Strong SQL proficiency, including writing, converting, and optimizing queries in large-scale analytical database environments
- Experience with data pipelines
- Experience contributing to schema design, data loading, and workload testing in a data warehousing or analytics environment
- Working knowledge of schema design, indexing strategy, ETL/ELT processes, and data loading in relational or columnar database systems
- Familiarity with metadata analysis, query bulk analysis, and workload performance testing
- Strong attention to detail and ability to independently produce accurate technical documentation and engineering artifacts
- Good written and verbal communication skills and ability to collaborate cross-functionally
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical field
- Experience with Big Data platforms, distributed database systems, or cloud data warehousing such as AWS Redshift, Google BigQuery, or Snowflake
- Familiarity with GDPR data compliance, HA/DR requirements, or data governance processes
- Experience with GitHub or comparable version control and artifact repository tools
- US-based work authorization without visa sponsorship or transfer
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The Company
What We Do
Ocient is a Chicago-based, venture-funded startup building a SQL compliant, exabyte-scale database platform that achieves better performance than Hadoop and NoSQL systems. It is a distributed system optimized for NVMe drives, RDMA networks and high core count processors and is written in C++. We are led by a management team with seven successful st
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