Engineer, Data Principal
Join Our Life-Saving Team!
Are you ready to elevate your career to new heights? PHI Health is looking for dynamic, driven individuals to join our team. We are committed to providing top-tier emergency medical services with unmatched speed and efficiency, saving lives when every second counts. By supporting our mission from the ground, you will play a crucial role in orchestrating the seamless operations that keep our advanced fleet soaring and our patients safe. With PHI Health you’ll collaborate with the best minds in the industry, driving initiatives that enhance our services and expand our reach to those who need it most. If you're passionate about making a difference and thrive on challenges, PHI Health offers an extraordinary opportunity to impact lives and develop your professional career in a meaningful way.
Who We Are:
PHI Health is the leading air ambulance provider in the United States. With an unmatched safety record and the best aviation, medical and communication specialists in the field, we set the standard in the air medical industry. We transport more than 22,000 patients each year from our more than 80 bases across the country, all while offering services and outreach education to local communities and leading healthcare systems. Our mission is simple: move communities to health while maintaining the highest standard of safety, period.
Job Summary:
The Principal Data Engineer will serve as a strategic leader in shaping and evolving the enterprise-wide data architecture. This role is responsible for designing scalable, resilient, and future-ready data solutions that power analytics, operational systems, and advanced data products across the organization. The ideal candidate is a visionary data architect and engineering expert who thrives in complex environments and is passionate about enabling data-driven innovation. As a key technical authority, the Principal Data Engineer will guide the development of data platforms, oversee the implementation of robust data pipelines, and ensure alignment with business and technology strategies. They will collaborate closely with engineering teams, data scientists, analysts, and executive leadership to define and execute the company’s data strategy. This role includes mentoring senior and junior engineers, setting engineering standards, and driving adoption of modern data technologies and practices. The Principal Data Engineer will also lead initiatives to unify and modernize the company’s data ecosystem, ensuring consistency, quality, and accessibility across all domains. The right candidate will be energized by the opportunity to architect the next generation of data infrastructure, influence enterprise data governance, and champion a culture of data excellence across the organization.
Responsibilities Include:
- Contributes to strategic direction for enterprise data architecture, ensuring alignment with business goals and future scalability.
- Leads the evaluation and adoption of emerging data technologies, platforms, and frameworks to drive innovation and efficiency.
- Guides the design and implementation of complex, cross-domain data solutions that support advanced analytics, AI/ML, and operational intelligence.
- Leads enterprise-wide efforts to modernize data infrastructure, including migration to cloud-native platforms and adoption of Microsoft Fabric components.
- High level of customer responsiveness, excellent documentation and communication skills and attention to detail.
- Architects data solutions: designs scalable, secure, and efficient data pipelines and architectures.
- Evaluates and recommends tools, frameworks, platforms, and best practices for data engineering needs
- Enforces coding standards, reviews others’ work, and mentors on best practices
- Ensures data quality, lineage, and compliance with regulations (specifically HIPAA).
- Mentors junior data engineers by providing guidance, training, and support.
- Assists with the onboarding of new data engineers.
- Leads documentation efforts.
- Conducts performance optimization: identifies bottlenecks and improves performance of data processes.
- Create and maintain data pipelines, data flows, PySpark notebooks, and semantic models.
- Assemble complex data sets from multiple domains to meet functional and non-functional business requirements.
- Identify, design, and implement internal process improvements: running manual processes, automating manual processes, improving data delivery, re-designing infrastructure for greater scalability, etc.
- Build the processes required for extraction, transformation, and loading of data from a wide variety of data sources including SQL, web APIs, and spreadsheets.
- Collaborate with stakeholders including the Executive, Product, Data and Design teams to assist with data-related technical issues and support their data infrastructure needs.
- Keep our data separated via access for diverse use cases including HIPAA, personally identifiable information, and financial.
- Create data tools for analysts and domain experts to assist them in building and improving the company’s services as an innovative industry leader.
- Work with domain experts and analysts to improve the company’s use of the value extracted from our data systems.
- Assist the company to understand the data that it currently has, as well as identify data sources that would provide further value to the company.
- Responsible for the completion of long-term IT data projects with competing priorities.
Location/Schedule:
The Successful Candidate Will Have:
- 10+ years in data engineering or closely related fields.
- ExpertSQL knowledge and experience working with relational databases, query authoring (SQL) as well as working familiarity with a variety of databases.
- Advanced knowledge of traditional ETL technologies such as Microsoft SSIS, Informatica, Talend, etc. is preferred.
- Experience with emerging cloud data platform providers such as Microsoft Fabric, Snowflake, Databricks, etc. is preferred.
- Experience with distributed processing technologies like Apache Spark engine and its various querying languages such as PySpark, Spark SQL, etc. is preferred.
- Plentiful experience building data pipelines, architectures, and data sets with little to no documentation and across main domains.
- Experience performing root cause analysis on internal and external data and processes to answer specific business questions and identify opportunities for improvement.
- Strong analytic skills.
- Build processes supporting data transformation, data structures, metadata, dependency, and workload management.
- A successful history of manipulating, processing, and extracting value from disconnected datasets.
- Experience supporting and working with cross-functional teams in a dynamic environment.
Our Core Competencies:
- Safe. We are absolute in our belief in the tenets of Destination Zero and that Zero is not only achievable, but the only acceptable outcome.
- Efficient. We are focused on outcomes that are smart and responsible by making the best use of our resources to maximize overall productivity and achieve sustainable profitability as a high performing organization.
- Quality. We are committed to ensuring excellent organizational performance which produces sustainable and reliable outcomes.
- Service. We are dedicated to the service of our customers, our communities and each other.
Behavioral Competencies:
- Show Real Grit - With safety as your guide, you pursue every task with drive, energy and a commitment to finish. You give all that the situation requires, even in the face of resistance or setbacks. You serve with resiliency, determined to help others.Perform with Integrity – You always do what’s right.Be a great team player - In order to achieve the best possible outcomes for our patients and customers, you must treat others with dignity and respect, and be committed to working as a cohesive team toward a common purpose.Give and Get Help - Giving your all in the service of others can tax your wellbeing. Know the signs and have the courage to give help and get help when needed.
The PHI Health Advantage:
For more than 40 years, our company has been providing critical air medical transport services across the country. As an organization, we outfit each aircraft we fly with the most advanced technology, subject our crews to the most rigorous protocols and training and pioneer the most-forward thinking safety program in the country. Everything that we do comes back to the safety of our crew and our patients. Our accident rate is well below the national average, and we were the first to receive the Vision Zero Aviation Safety Award. This belief has guided us towards a number of industry firsts and has given us the highest safety rating in the industry. DISCLAIMER The above Statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by people assigned to this classification. They are not intended to be construed, as an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, and skills required of personnel so classified.
PHI, Inc. provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws
