Senior Data Engineer, Public Sector
Scale AI · Washington
$150,400–$259,000
Jul 10, 2026
Washington
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior-level data engineering role focused on building and maintaining analytical infrastructure for a public sector business unit. Day-to-day work involves designing data warehouses, data marts, and BI reporting environments, constructing and improving data pipelines, and creating core data models using tools like SQL, Python/R, and dbt. The role suits an experienced data engineer comfortable working across operations, finance, and engineering teams, and an active Secret security clearance is required.
Senior level · 5+ years · Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV · Secret clearance · Full-time
Pay in the description: $150,400–$259,000
“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
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 (6)
The clearance requirement is stated in the main responsibilities section: 'Have an active Secret security clearance (Top Secret preferred).' Secret is the hard gate; Top Secret is preferred. The clearance field is set to Secret accordingly.
The 5+ years of experience and all technical skills (SQL, Python/R, dbt, data modeling) appear under the 'Ideally You'd Have' heading, which reads as a preferred/ideal section rather than a hard-requirements block. However, the language 'Mastery of SQL', 'Experience building a reliable transformation layer… using tools such as DBT', and '5+ years of relevant work experience' is firm enough — and the section is the only qualifications block in the posting — to treat these as genuine gates. They are marked required accordingly.
Data warehousing and business intelligence are mentioned as responsibilities in the role narrative ('implement Scale's data warehouse, data mart, and business intelligence reporting environments') rather than as explicit skill requirements, so they are marked preferred.
The salary range ($150,400–$259,000) is noted as potentially spanning 'several career levels at Scale' and will be refined based on location and interview performance.
The alt SOC (15-2031 Operations Research Analysts) reflects the significant BI/analytics and ad-hoc analysis component of the role alongside the pipeline/warehouse engineering work.
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
The employer publishes the full description on their own site — read it there ↗. Or sign in to read it here — it's free, and it also lets you track this application.