Benefits:
- 401(k)
- 401(k) matching
- Competitive salary
- Dental insurance
- Health insurance
- Opportunity for advancement
- Paid time off
- Training & development
- Vision insurance
IntelliTech is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) to build authoritative data products supporting U.S. Army acquisition and program operations. This engineer will own the data pipelines, data models, and ontology that turn fragmented Army and enterprise source systems into governed, decision-ready products inside Army Vantage / Palantir Foundry.
This is a senior individual-contributor role on a lean team. The engineer will make architectural decisions, build production systems, and raise the technical standard of the work - partnering directly with Government stakeholders, software engineers, and product designers to deliver data products analysts and program leaders actually use.
Work is performed onsite at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, five days per week. An active Secret clearance is required at the time of hire.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
Data Products and Pipelines
- Own the architecture and implementation of scalable data pipelines and data products within Army Vantage or Palantir Foundry.
- Integrate and transform data from multiple Army and enterprise source systems, including acquisition, program management, contracting, financial, and logistics data.
- Build production transforms in Python, PySpark, and SQL using Pipeline Builder and Code Repositories, structured across raw, cleaned, and curated layers.
- Design scheduled and incremental builds that keep data products current without reprocessing full history.
- Preserve raw source data with metadata capture for source system, ingest timestamp, and dataset version so every product is reproducible.
Data Modeling and Ontology
- Develop and maintain the Foundry ontology - object types, link types, properties, and actions - that supports applications, reporting, and analysis.
- Model authoritative entities and reconcile conflicting identifiers and definitions across Army source systems.
- Work with Government data stewards to establish semantic definitions, data dictionaries, and agreed business rules.
- Build the consumption layer analysts work in, including Workshop applications, Contour analyses, and Foundry API access for downstream tools.
Data Quality, Lineage, and Governance
- Design for data quality up front: schema conformance, referential integrity across linked datasets, and business-rule validation with actionable row- and column-level feedback.
- Implement health checks, data expectations, and monitoring across build success, freshness, completeness, and quality.
- Maintain end-to-end lineage from raw source through curated product so every reported figure traces to an explicit source and version.
- Apply access controls, markings, and role-based scoping consistent with program security requirements and CUI handling.
Engineering Standards and Operations
- Establish and enforce engineering standards for testing, source control, code review, CI/CD, deployment, and operations.
- Optimize build performance and platform cost through partitioning, incremental processing, and efficient transform design.
- Review technical designs, mentor engineers, and resolve complex data challenges across the team.
- Participate in Technical Exchange Meetings with Government source-system owners to define data contracts, including source format, semantics, refresh cadence, and validation requirements.
- Implement approved automated refresh paths - API-based retrieval, secure file exchange, scheduled file landing - while maintaining hardened manual upload workflows so mission operations are never blocked on a single integration.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Data Science, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
- Five or more years of experience building production data systems.
- Strong hands-on proficiency with Python and SQL, and with modern data-engineering patterns including ETL/ELT design, incremental processing, and orchestration.
- Experience designing data pipelines and data products on Palantir Foundry, Army Vantage, Databricks, or a comparable enterprise data platform.
- Experience with data modeling, ontology or semantic layers, data quality frameworks, and lineage.
- Strong software-engineering fundamentals, including testing, source control, CI/CD, and monitoring.
- Experience supporting a Department of Defense or federal Government customer.
- Active Secret clearance. U.S. citizenship required.
- Strong communication skills and the ability to work directly with technical and non-technical stakeholders in mission environments.
- Ability to work onsite at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, five days per week.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Direct hands-on experience with Palantir Foundry or Army Vantage, including Pipeline Builder, Code Repositories, Ontology Manager, Workshop, and Contour.
- Experience supporting U.S. Army programs, particularly acquisition or program management data.
- Experience with PySpark or other distributed data-processing technologies.
- Familiarity with Army acquisition and program data domains such as program milestones, PPBE and appropriations data, contract awards and obligations, and property or readiness data.
- Experience with cloud platforms, DevSecOps practices, and infrastructure as code.
- Familiarity with Databricks, dbt, data mesh, or medallion architecture patterns such as bronze / silver / gold.
- Familiarity with CUI handling and Army cloud environments such as cArmy, including IL4 / IL5 accreditation boundaries.
- Experience establishing data-sharing agreements and supporting Technical Exchange Meetings with Government source-system owners.
INTERVIEW PROCESS
Video interview required and may include a technical assessment. Candidates should be prepared to discuss:
- Hands-on experience building production data pipelines and data products on Foundry, Vantage, or a comparable enterprise platform.
- Ontology and data modeling decisions they have personally owned, and the tradeoffs behind them.
- How data quality, lineage, and reproducibility were handled in production environments.
- Examples of systems built from scratch and engineering standards they established for a team.
- Work with large-scale or mission-critical federal datasets and analytics platforms.
- Current clearance status and availability to work onsite at Fort Belvoir five days per week.
COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS
The range displayed represents the typical salary range for this role and is not a guarantee of compensation. Actual compensation will be based on factors unique to each candidate, including job-related skills, relevant experience, certifications, training, clearance level, and level of seniority. IntelliTech uses the full breadth of the salary range in making compensation decisions.
IntelliTech provides a comprehensive benefits package designed to support employees' well-being and professional growth, including health, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k), paid time off, professional development opportunities, and flexible work arrangements to support work-life balance.
EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER
At IntelliTech, we are committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace. We believe that a variety of perspectives and backgrounds leads to stronger teams and better solutions. IntelliTech is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, gender, age, disability, or veteran status. We encourage all qualified candidates to apply.