Principal Data Engineer

Become a part of our caring community   The Principal Data Engineer owns the design and delivery of the NBA platform's data pipelines on the Databricks Lakehouse. This is a hands-on engineering role first - you are expected to be a significant individual contributor building production pipelines every sprint. You also lead a small team of data engineers and contractors, and are accountable for the quality, reliability, and timeliness of the data that feeds the platform's AI models and decisioning system. What You'll Own Pipeline delivery - design, build, and own the Bronze/Silver/Gold lakehouse pipelines that power the NBA platform: member profiles, clinical signals, behavioral data, web clickstream, and socioeconomic features Hands-on development - actively write and ship production SQL, Python, and Spark code alongside your team; this is not a supervisory role Data modeling - own the Gold layer schema that serves as the canonical member feature set for model training and batch scoring; make design decisions that balance flexibility, performance, and governance Data quality - build and maintain data quality checks, null/sparsity monitoring, and pipeline alerting so the team knows before anyone else when something is wrong External data integration - onboard new data sources (clinical feeds, government datasets, third-party signals) from raw ingestion through production-ready features Contractor management - manage data engineering contractors within your pod; set expectations, review work, and hold the team to quality standards Cross-functional partnership - work closely with the Principal Decision Intelligence Engineer on feature requirements, and with software engineering pods on how data flows into the decisioning system What You'll Need Sponsorship is not available for this role Bachelor's degree in computer science or relevant field 10+ years of data engineering experience with at least 1-2 years in a tech lead or senior lead capacity Deep hands-on experience with Databricks and Delta Lake - you have built and owned production pipelines, not just contributed to them Strong SQL and Python skills; comfortable with Spark at scale Experience designing and owning a medallion lakehouse architecture (Bronze/Silver/Gold or equivalent) Proven ability to lead a small team or pod through delivery and manage contractor resources Strong data quality instincts - you treat bad data as a production incident Clear communicator - you can explain a pipeline design decision to a data scientist, a product owner, and a compliance officer Comfort using AI productivity tools (Claude, Copilot, or similar) to accelerate development and analysis Strong plus: Masters degree Experience with Databricks Delta Live Tables, Unity Catalog, and Feature Store Familiarity with Kafka-based event pipelines and real-time data ingestion Background in healthcare, insurance, or other regulated industries with PHI/HIPAA data handling requirements Experience integrating government or third-party datasets (CMS, CDC, STARS, or similar) Use your skills to make an impact   Work Style: Remote/Hybrid - Preferably Boston, MA. Occasional travel to Humana's offices for training or meetings may be required. Work Hours : Typical business hours are Monday-Friday, 8 hours/day, 5 days/week-- some flexibility might be possible, depending on business needs. Very minimal travel might be required for training, meetings, and/or conferences Work at Home Requirements WAH requirements: Must have the ability to provide a high-speed DSL or cable modem for a home office. Associates or contractors who live and work from home in the state of California will be provided with payment for their internet expense. A minimum standard speed for optimal performance of 25x10 (25mpbs download x 10mpbs upload) is required.   Satellite and Wireless Internet service is NOT allowed for this role. A dedicated space lacking ongoing interruptions to protect member PHI / HIPAA information Interview Format  As part of our hiring process, we will be using on-demand technology provided by Hire Vue, a third-party vendor. This technology provides our team of recruiters and hiring managers with an enhanced method for decision-making through on-demand candidate assessments. If you are selected to move forward from your application prescreen, you will receive correspondence inviting you to participate in an on-demand assessment with pre-determined questions. You should anticipate the assessment to take approximately 10-15 minutes. Your on-demand assessment will be reviewed, and you will subsequently be informed if you will be moving forward to next round of interviews. SSN Task via Workday Should you be extended a formal employment offer you will receive a request to enter your SSN into our Workday system to scan for duplicate profiles. Work Hours : Typical business hours are Monday-Friday, 8 hours/day, 5 days/week-- some flexibility might be possible, depending on business needs. Very minimal travel might be required for training, meetings, and/or conferences Work at Home Requirements WAH requirements: Must have the ability to provide a high-speed DSL or cable modem for a home office. Associates or contractors who live and work from home in the state of California will be provided with payment for their internet expense. A minimum standard speed for optimal performance of 25x10 (25mpbs download x 10mpbs upload) is required.   Satellite and Wireless Internet service is NOT allowed for this role. A dedicated space lacking ongoing interruptions to protect member PHI / HIPAA information Interview Format  As part of our hiring process, we will be using on-demand technology provided by Hire Vue, a third-party vendor. This technology provides our team of recruiters and hiring managers with an enhanced method for decision-making through on-demand candidate assessments. If you are selected to mo