Data Engineer Intermediate at Chenega Corporation
Arlington, VA
$144,800–$185,000from the description
Jul 14, 2026
Arlington, VA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A mid-to-senior data engineering role supporting DARPA operational missions, focused on designing and maintaining secure data pipelines, ETL/ELT processes, data warehouses, and data lakes within DoD cloud and classified on-premises environments. The work involves enforcing DoD security controls and data governance, collaborating with analysts and data scientists, and mentoring junior engineers. Candidates need 5+ years of data engineering experience in a federal or defense context, along with an active Secret clearance.
Senior level · 5+ years · Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV · Bachelor's required · Secret clearance · Full-time
Advertised as Mid, 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
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). 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 (8)
The title 'Data Engineer Intermediate' maps to an advertised Mid level, but the actual requirements — 5+ years, DoD/IC environment experience, architecture ownership, mentoring junior engineers, and TS/SCI-level data handling — firmly support a Senior classification.
Clearance: the JD hard-gates on an active Secret clearance and additionally requires the ability to obtain TS/SCI. The role also involves handling data at TS/SCI classification levels, and an IAT/IAM Level II or III certification is required.
Python, Java, and Scala are listed together as interchangeable programming language options under the Knowledge, Skills and Abilities section, which reads as a required qualifications block; Python is used as the primary with Java and Scala as alternatives.
AWS GovCloud and Azure Government are listed as interchangeable cloud environment options in the required qualifications; AWS GovCloud is used as the primary.
Spark, Hadoop, Kafka, and Airflow appear in the Knowledge, Skills and Abilities section but are framed as 'expertise with' and 'knowledge of' — slightly softer language than the firm gates above; however, they sit within the same qualifications block. Spark/Hadoop are grouped as big data technologies (Spark primary, Hadoop as alternative); Kafka and Airflow are listed separately.
A Master's degree is listed under Preferred Qualifications and is not a hard requirement.
ETL/ELT pipeline building and data warehousing/data modeling are core to the role's described responsibilities and qualifications and are treated as hard gates, even though they describe capabilities rather than named products.
Requires a Secret clearance — the cleared population is a small fraction of this occupation, so the real candidate pool is materially smaller than the estimate below, which does not model clearance.
Read the full posting
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