Applied Methods
~The MetaData & AnalyticsData Engineer

Data Engineer

This role involves building and optimizing the data infrastructure that powers analytics, machine learning, and operational decision-making across AI-focused organizations. Data engineers in this position design scalable pipelines to ingest data from infrastructure, product systems, and business operations, then transform that raw data into reliable datasets that serve analysts, data scientists, and product teams. What sets this role apart is its foundation-level focus—rather than analyzing data or building models, these engineers architect the systems, data models, and warehouses that make all downstream work possible. They typically report into data or platform leadership and work cross-functionally with product, engineering, finance, and operations teams to translate business requirements into production-grade data infrastructure that scales with organizational growth.

$ titles --canonical
Data EngineerSenior Data EngineerStaff Data Warehouse Engineer
Open Jobs36
Companies Hiring25
$ expectations --role data-engineer

Measured across 35 of 36 open postings.

37%
expect AI in the role's own work
6% state it as a requirement
6%
work directly with customers
6%
manage people
Mid
most common level
51% of open postings
BY LEVEL

This role is advertised at 2 levels, so a single figure for the role would describe none of them. Experience and pay are the midpoints for each level on its own.

LevelShareMedian yearsMedian pay
Mid51%(18)5—
Senior34%(12)6.5—

A dash means too few postings stated it to report a midpoint. Most companies do not publish a salary band, so pay is indicative rather than a market rate. 3 levels with fewer than 10 open postings are not shown.

WHAT THEY ASK FOR, VERBATIM

“Use AI-assisted coding tools to build and maintain front ends alongside Python backend serv”

Graphcore · Staff Data Engineer – Agentic Applications

“actively experimenting with AI to transform how we understand and support our workforce”

Anthropic · Recruiting Analytics Data Engineer

“Build internal data tools with applied AI, using Serval's own agents to turn recurring data questions into self-serve answers.”

Serval · Data Engineer

“Leverage AI-assisted engineering tools to improve development and testing productivity”

True Anomaly · Data Engineer I
$ barriers
41%
advertised as remote
of postings that state a work mode
17%
state a degree requirement
11%
need a security clearance

Requirements are a share of every open posting, so a role missing from this list is one where almost nobody asks. Work mode is different: many postings never say, so that figure counts only the ones that do.

$02

Skills

What companies are looking for in this role.

$ skills --core

Data pipeline engineering

100%

Data quality and governance

80%

Analytics data modeling

77%

Database and storage engineering

37%

SQL query development

29%

Cloud and data platform architecture

29%

Dashboarding and self-service analytics

29%

Distributed systems architecture

23%

Monitoring and observability

17%

Backend and API engineering

17%

Cloud infrastructure operations

14%

Infrastructure automation and IaC

14%

Systems performance optimization

11%

CI/CD and release automation

9%
$ skills --emerging

LLM data infrastructure

9%

Agent workflow design

9%
$ skills --soft

Mentoring and code review

9%
$03

Technology

The tools and technologies that define this role.

$ tech --language
Pythonvery high
SQLhigh
Golow
GraphQLlow
Javalow
Rustlow
Scalalow
$ tech --framework
Apache Airflowmoderate
Apache Sparkmoderate
Apache Flinklow
OpenTelemetrylow
pandaslow
PySparklow
$ tech --platform
AWSmoderate
Dockermoderate
Kubernetesmoderate
Amazon Redshiftlow
Amazon S3low
Apache Kafkalow
Azurelow
BigQuerylow
Databrickslow
Delta Lakelow
GitHublow
Google Cloud Platformlow
Palantir Foundrylow
PostgreSQLlow
Snowflakelow
$ tech --tool
dbtmoderate
Gitlow
GitHub Actionslow
Grafanalow
Terraformlow
$ tech --concept
AI agentslow
CI/CDlow
Data warehousinglow
ETLlow
REST APIlow
$04

Open Jobs

36 open Data Engineer jobs across 25 companies.

OpenAI4d
Data Engineer, Core Experimentation
Seattle·Data & Analytics
Shield AI2w
Staff Data & Analytics Engineer, Domain Enablement (R6112)
Dallas, Texas·Data & Analytics
Figma2w
Data Engineer Intern (2027)
San Francisco, CA • New York, NY·Data & Analytics
Nebius2w
Senior Data Engineer
Tel Aviv, Israel·Data & Analytics
Pika2w
Data Engineer
US remote·Data & Analytics
Graphcore3w
Staff Data Engineer – Agentic Applications
Bristol, UK·Data & Analytics
Anthropic3w
Recruiting Analytics Data Engineer
San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY | Seattle, WA·Data & Analytics
Crusoe1mo
Senior Software Engineer, Data Platform
San Francisco, CA - US·Data & Analytics
Nebius1mo
Senior Data Engineer
Germany; Israel; Netherlands; Prague, Czech Republic; Remote - Europe; United Kingdom·Data & Analytics
Anthropic1mo
Data Engineer, GTM
San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY·Data & Analytics
Abridge1mo
Member of Technical Staff, Data
SF Office·Data & Analytics
Serval1mo
Data Engineer
San Francisco·Data & Analytics
True Anomaly1mo
Data Engineer I
Denver, CO; Long Beach, CA·Data & Analytics
Nebius1mo
Data Engineer (Agentic Search)
Israel·Data & Analytics
Waymo1mo
Senior Data Engineer
Mountain View, California, USA·Data & Analytics
Cohere1mo
Data Engineer, Data Foundations
New York·Data & Analytics
Altana1mo
Staff Implementation Delivery Engineer
London, England·Data & Analytics
Anthropic2mo
Data Engineer, Safeguards
San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY·Data & Analytics
CoreWeave2mo
Senior Data Engineer
Livingston, NJ / New York, NY / Sunnyvale, CA / San Francisco, CA / Bellevue, WA·Data & Analytics
Scale AI3mo
Senior Data Engineer, Public Sector
Washington, DC·Data & Analytics