Lead Data Engineer / Integration Specialist

A best-in-class city that attracts best-in-class talent, Philadelphia is an incredible place to build a career. From our thriving arts scene and rich history to our culture of passion and grit, there are countless reasons to love living and working here. With a workforce of over 30,000 people, and more than 1,000 different job categories, the City of Philadelphia offers boundless opportunities to make an impact. As an employer, the City of Philadelphia values inclusion, integrity, innovation, empowerment, and hard work above all else. We offer a vibrant work environment, comprehensive health care and benefits, and the experience you need to grow and excel. If you’re interested in working with a passionate team of people who care about the future of Philadelphia, start here. What We Offer: Impact - The work you do here matters to millions. Growth - Philadelphia is growing, why not grow with it? Diversity & Inclusion - Find a career in a place where everyone belongs. Benefits - We care about your well-being. Data Engineering at the City is a unique opportunity for meaningful, technically challenging, and service-oriented work. The Lead Data Engineer / Integration Specialist will play a key role in designing, building, documenting, and improving enterprise data integrations across diverse City systems. This position will focus on complex integrations that require strong data analysis, software development practices, and reusable engineering patterns. The role will support integrations across systems of record, centralized data platforms, SaaS environments, departmental applications, APIs, file-based systems, and systems that may not provide native APIs or standardized data access methods. In those cases, the Lead Data Engineer / Integration Specialist may help design custom API access patterns, extraction strategies, data contracts, or other integration approaches that allow the City to share and reuse data in a reliable and maintainable way. The Lead Data Engineer / Integration Specialist will help standardize integration patterns, improve data consistency and performance, reduce one-off integration work, and strengthen the City’s ability to build scalable data pipelines and APIs. The position will support priority departmental and enterprise integration initiatives, while also contributing to the broader enterprise integration portfolio managed by CityGeo. We are looking for a candidate who is not only technically skilled, but also passionate about leveraging data to improve City operations and community life. This team is fundamental to the innovation of City services that directly affect residents. If you are eager to contribute to a team that values innovation, efficiency, service- oriented work, and data-driven decision-making, we encourage you to apply. Some prominent services the team is responsible for include DataBridge, OIT’s enterprise data warehouse, AIS, the City’s custom address information systems which supports public address search and internal geocoding, and Databridge-Airflow, a custom workflow generator and orchestrator for departmental integrations (https://metadata.phila.gov/) and open data publishing. Some examples of OIT’s commitment to serving the public through the effective and innovative integration of City open data include: https://Atlas.phila.gov https://property.phila.gov https://Openmaps.phila.gov https://streetsmartphl.phila.gov/ www.phila.gov/solarmap www.phila.gov/stressmap Essential Functions · Design, develop, test, deploy, and maintain complex enterprise data pipelines and integrations. · Work with departments, product teams, vendors, and technical partners to understand how data is created, stored, updated, accessed, and used. · Design integrations that connect systems of record, centralized databases, SaaS platforms, APIs, file- based systems, and custom applications. · Develop robust ETL/ELT workflows using Python, SQL, Apache Airflow, DBT, Postgres, PostGIS, AWS, MuleSoft, and related tools. · Develop or support custom API, data access, or extraction patterns for systems that do not provide native APIs or standard integration methods. · Establish reusable integration templates, code patterns, data contracts, naming conventions, and documentation practices. · Improve data consistency, transformation logic, performance, reliability, and maintainability across enterprise integrations. · Support critical systems and platforms such as DataBridge, DataBridge-Airflow, AIS, open data publishing workflows, enterprise APIs, and department-facing data products. · Collaborate with data architects, systems engineers, application teams, and department stakeholders to align integration designs with business processes and enterprise data standards. · Contribute to data governance, metadata, master data management, data quality, and integration standardization efforts. · Participate in technical design reviews, code reviews, and integration planning to improve maintainability, scalability, and quality. · Troubleshoot production data pipelines and integration issues, including failures related to source- system changes, schema drift, data quality, performance, scheduling, or access. · Write clear technical documentation for systems, pipelines, APIs, data models, integration logic, and operational procedures. · Communicate complex technical concepts in understandable terms to technical and non-technical stakeholders. Competencies, Knowledge, Skills and Abilities Competencies: · Clear and concise written and verbal communication. · Strong documentation habits and ability to explain technical decisions. · Creative problem-solving and critical thinking. · Ability to work with data from diverse domains and systems. · Ability to manage multiple priorities and workflows simultaneously. · Ability to guide technical implementation in a collaborative team environment. · Ability to identify opportunities for standardiza