Principal Data Engineer
Kemper · Birmingham, AL
$111,900–$186,700from the description
Jul 1, 2026
Birmingham, AL
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior individual-contributor role at an insurance company, focused on designing and building enterprise-scale data pipelines, cloud-native data platforms, and integration frameworks that serve analytics, reporting, and AI/ML workloads. The position also carries a technical leadership dimension — setting engineering standards, mentoring less-experienced engineers, and guiding architectural decisions. It suits a seasoned data engineer with deep experience in cloud platforms, SQL/Python, Snowflake, and ETL/ELT, ideally with a background in regulated industries such as insurance.
Senior level · 10+ years · Remote · Full-time
Advertised as Principal, but the requirements read as Senior.
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 630 people nationally plausibly meet what this posting asks for (database architects). range 260–940
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $142,568 (middle half $111,775–$173,013). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (10)
The role is titled 'Principal Data Engineer' but the actual requirements — 10+ years of experience, technical leadership, mentoring, and architectural guidance — are consistent with a Senior-level individual contributor. 'Principal' in this context appears to be a title/grade rather than a true org-wide technical authority role, so seniority is assessed as Senior.
SOC classification is Medium confidence: the role is primarily about architecting and building enterprise data pipelines, warehouses, and lakes (15-1243 Database Architects), but the volume of software engineering work (Python, Spark, CI/CD, IaC, streaming) makes 15-1252 Software Developers a credible alternative.
AWS and Azure are both explicitly named in the requirements section as cloud platforms the candidate must work with; they are listed as separate required skills rather than alternatives.
AWS Glue and S3 are listed together in the requirements section as examples of cloud-native tools; S3 is a storage service rather than a distinct engineering skill and is omitted as a standalone skill.
Spark, Kafka, Airflow, dbt, and Infrastructure as Code are listed under 'preferred' in the qualifications section, so they are marked as preferred. However, Spark, Kafka, and Airflow also appear in the required qualifications as hands-on experience examples ('e.g., AWS Glue, S3, Snowflake, Kafka, Airflow'), creating some ambiguity; the preferred section listing is treated as the governing signal for those three.
Informatica/IICS appears in the required qualifications section as part of the ETL/ELT pipeline development requirement and is marked required; 'IDMC/IICS or DBT a plus' in the preferred section introduces some ambiguity, but the required-section mention is treated as the governing signal.
Insurance industry experience (P&C and/or Life) is listed as preferred, not a hard gate; it is omitted as it names no specific technology or tool.
The degree requirement accepts equivalent work experience ('or equivalent work experience'), so the degree requirement is set to None.
The role is open to remote candidates in AL, CT, FL, GA, OH, and PA, as well as hybrid in Chicago/Downers Grove, IL.
This posting reads as a fully-remote role, so it was scored against the national candidate pool rather than a single metro.
Read the full posting
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