Associate - Data Engineering & Insights Lead (USA Based)

Designs and optimizes AWS data pipelines, links and validates large education and workforce datasets, and builds analytics products that help public-sector teams measure outcomes, improve operations, and make evidence-informed decisions. Fully remote with one onsite. Will close by 11/9.

Position Overview

Forest Pond Associates is seeking a Senior Data Engineering and Insights Associate to support a public-sector longitudinal education and workforce data initiative. This role turns complex, confidential data into dependable data assets and decision-support products that help public agencies understand outcomes, improve operations, and make evidence-informed decisions. The associate combines hands-on cloud data engineering with analytical judgment, stakeholder partnership, and careful stewardship of sensitive information.

The work spans data pipelines, data quality, system modernization, research-ready analytics environments, dashboards, and data conversions. The associate will support several teams and products, translating policy and program questions into usable, well-governed data solutions.

What You’ll Own

> Client Delivery

Create and maintain scalable data pipeline architecture that meets functional, performance, reliability, and security needs.

Design and implement cloud data solutions using AWS services such as S3, Glue, Redshift, EMR, Athena, Kinesis, and Lambda.

Build and maintain orchestration workflows using Apache Airflow, AWS Step Functions, or comparable tools.

Integrate, transform, and load data from varied sources using SQL and appropriate big-data technologies; support data conversions for modernization or system replacement.

Assemble large, complex datasets that meet business-area requirements and support reproducible research, statistical analysis, predictive modeling, machine learning, and evidence-building.

Build analytics tools, dashboards, reports, analytical models, and other decision-support products that make education, workforce, operational, and program outcomes easier to understand.

Identify data-quality issues, perform root-cause analysis, and implement validation, monitoring, alerting, and logging controls across pipelines.

Automate manual processes, improve data delivery, and redesign infrastructure when needed to increase scalability, reliability, or usability.

Partner with data scientists, research analysts, policy analysts, executives, and technical teams to resolve data issues and improve enterprise data assets.

Follow applicable privacy, security, data-governance, and interagency data-sharing requirements when handling confidential data.

> Teams, Systems, Data

You will work across cloud data platforms, relational databases, orchestration tools, analytical environments, and reporting products. The data may be large, disconnected, confidential, and drawn from multiple organizational sources. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams and help make shared data products reliable, traceable, and suitable for operational use and research.

What Success Looks Like

> First 90 days

Build working relationships with program, research, policy, data science, and technology partners; understand their highest-priority questions and delivery needs.

Learn the existing data architecture, source systems, governance requirements, pipeline operations, and modernization priorities.

Identify near-term opportunities to improve data quality, reliability, monitoring, or manual data workflows, and agree on a practical delivery sequence.

Contribute to a prioritized data product, pipeline, conversion, or reporting deliverable with clear validation and operational handoff.

> First year

Deliver and maintain dependable pipelines and analytical data environments that support recurring operations and evidence-building.

Improve data quality visibility through implemented checks, documented dependencies, monitoring, and issue resolution practices.

Help stakeholders use dashboards, reports, linked data, and analytical products to answer priority education and workforce questions.

Contribute to a more scalable and well-governed longitudinal data architecture and support planned system modernization or replacement work.

What We’re Looking For

Required qualifications

• Advanced SQL skills, including query authoring and work with relational databases; familiarity with multiple database technologies.
• Experience building and optimizing big-data pipelines, architectures, and datasets.
• Experience designing and refining dashboards, reports, analytical models, or decision-support products for executive and non-technical audiences.
• Experience working with student-level higher-education data and linking it with other sources, such as employment or wage data, to measure outcomes or inform decisions.
• Experience analyzing internal and external data and processes to answer business questions, find root causes, and identify improvement opportunities.
• Strong analytical skills and experience working with unstructured or disconnected datasets, including extracting value from large datasets.
• Experience building and supporting data transformation processes, data structures, metadata, dependencies, and workload management.
• Working knowledge of message queuing, stream processing, and highly scalable data stores.
• Strong project-management and organizational skills, with experience supporting cross-functional teams in a changing environment.

What Makes You Stand Out

• Hands-on experience with AWS data services such as S3, Glue, Redshift, EMR, Athena, Kinesis, or Lambda.
• Experience with Apache Airflow, AWS Step Functions, or comparable workflow orchestration tools.
• Experience building data environments for statistical analysis, predictive modeling, machine learning, or reproducible research.
• Experience supporting data conversions, cloud migrations, or legacy-system modernization.
• Ability to translate complex policy or program questions into validated datasets and clear, useful analytics products.

Who You Are

You are self-directed, organized, and comfortable balancing the needs of multiple teams and products. You combine technical depth with sound analytical judgment, explain tradeoffs clearly to technical and non-technical partners, and take care when working with confidential information. You look for practical ways to improve reliability and usability while keeping data quality, privacy, and governance in view.

Why This Role Matters

Longitudinal data can help clients see how education and workforce experiences connect over time, but only when the underlying data is trustworthy, responsibly linked, and easy to use. This role builds the engineering and analytical foundation that allows teams to answer consequential questions and improve programs with evidence.

Location

Remote with 1 on site for top interview finalists. This assignment must be performed from within the United States.

Type of Employment

Employment classification, schedule, compensation, and engagement terms will be confirmed during the hiring process.

Firm Benefits & Acknowledgments

Forest Pond Associates will provide applicable compensation, benefits, and employment details during the hiring process. Eligibility and terms depend on the final employment classification and applicable plan documents.

Automated Screening & Data Privacy Disclosure

To process applications efficiently and fairly, we utilize automated systems to assist our talent acquisition team in reviewing baseline qualifications and matching your background against job requirements. By checking the box in the “Automated Screening & Data Privacy Disclosure” question below, you acknowledge and consent to the automated processing of your application materials.

How we use data: Your resume and application details are securely processed by our evaluation tools to highlight matching professional experience. Your data is never sold to third parties or used for external machine learning training.

Requesting Accommodation: We are committed to an inclusive hiring process. If you require a reasonable accommodation or wish to request a manual review of your application due to a medical condition, disability, or specific local statutory right, please contact our team using the Contact Us on our website.

How to Apply

Before 09Nov2026, submit your resume and application materials through the application link for this position. Please respond to all of the application questions.