Data Engineer at Robert Half
Arlington, VA
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Jul 14, 2026
Arlington, VA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A data engineering role centered on building and maintaining scalable pipelines, data platforms, and storage solutions — including warehouses and data lakes — to serve analytics and operational needs. The work involves pipeline development with Python, Spark, Databricks, and orchestration tools, alongside data quality automation and collaboration with cross-functional teams. Suited to engineers with at least seven years of hands-on production data engineering experience.
Senior level · 7+ years · Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV · Contract
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
Posted 2 times — it's one opening, so apply once.
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 85 people in the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (data architects). range 50–150
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 $166,452 (middle half $130,866–$200,954).
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 (8)
This posting is placed by Robert Half, a staffing firm, and explicitly mentions 'contract, temporary and permanent placement solutions' with contract/temporary benefits described — the engagement type is most likely contract or contract-to-hire, though the specific arrangement for this role is not stated.
The role is titled 'Data Engineer' with no seniority modifier, but the 7+ years requirement and scope (production-scale pipelines, cross-functional collaboration, architecture input) support a Senior classification.
Airflow and dbt are listed together as examples of 'workflow orchestration tools' — they serve different but complementary functions (orchestration vs. transformation), so they are emitted as separate skills. The JD frames them as a paired requirement rather than strict alternatives, but they appear in the same clause.
The cloud platform requirement names Azure and Google Cloud as examples of acceptable platforms alongside generic cloud data services — Azure and GCP are captured as alternatives to each other since the JD treats them as interchangeable options.
Parquet, Delta Lake, and Iceberg are listed as acceptable modern data formats; Parquet is emitted as the primary with the others as alternatives.
The SOC classification is Medium confidence: the role spans pipeline engineering (15-1252) and data architecture/modeling (15-1243); the emphasis on designing platforms and data modeling tips it toward 15-1243, but a strong case exists for 15-1252 given the heavy coding and pipeline-building focus.
SOC 15-1243 is "Database Architects", but this role was labelled "Data Architects" — the code and title disagree, so the occupation (and its BLS denominator) may be wrong.
Posting is for a contract engagement — the market benchmarks below price full-time roles, so read the comp comparison with that in mind.
Read the full posting
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