Data Engineer Mid-Level

About Varda

Low Earth orbit is open for business. Varda is accelerating the development of commercial space infrastructure from in-orbit pharmaceutical processing to reliable and economical reentry capsules.

From life-saving pharmaceuticals to more powerful fiber optics there is a world of products used on Earth today that can only be manufactured in space. Varda is accelerating innovation in the orbital economy by creating both the products and infrastructure needed so space can directly benefit life on Earth. Our mission is to expand the economic bounds of humankind.

Our team is uniquely suited to accomplishing this goal with leadership and staff comprised of veterans from SpaceX Blue Origin major pharmaceutical companies and Silicon Valley. Varda was founded in January 2021 by Will Bruey and Delian Asparouhov with significant backing from world class investors including Khosla Ventures Lux Capital Founders Fund Caffeinated Capital General Catalyst and Also Capital.

Varda is headquartered in El Segundo California where we have offices and a production facility where our vehicles equipment and materials are built integrated and tested. Varda also has offices in Washington DC and Huntsville AL.

Join Varda and work to create a bustling in-space ecosystem.

About This Role

Varda is seeking a Data Engineer to join our this role you will support the development of data pipelines storage security and quality that power the organization. You will learn and contribute to the current application ecosystem and data architecture. You will collaborate with team members across functions to help identify opportunities for process or application improvements.

You will assist in the implementation of these solutions through the product life cycle from opportunity identification to support and sustainment. You will work cross-functionally with team members across Varda to support initiatives that enhance company processes execution insight and infrastructure robustness. Projects will include a wide range of desired outcomes including cycle time reduction cost reduction improved decision making risk reduction and any other key operational efficiency. Your contributions will immediately impact functional operations and have an opportunity to contribute to Vardas overall growth and success. This role will report to the Director of Enterprise Applications.

This is a full-time onsite exempt position located in our El Segundo headquarters.

Responsibilities

• Assist in building and maintaining ELT pipelines that ingest data from ERP CRM PLM QMS and other enterprise systems.
• Support enterprise data platform and enterprise application evaluations by researching external solutions and documenting findings.
• Assist with data storage tasks including table format standards partitioning strategies and interoperability across the tool ecosystem.
• Establish data quality frameworks lineage tracking and pipeline observability including SLA monitoring proactive alerting and production-grade logging.
• Support AI/ML workflows by designing feature pipelines clean data products and a governed knowledge layer that keeps data semantically aligned for reliable model and agent consumption.
• Work with application engineers and functional stakeholders to help translate requirements and business logic into technical specifications and data solutions.
• Operate effectively within regulated environments where your pipelines will be subject to compliance and auditability requirements enforced by FDA GMP ITAR and DCAA.
• Implement and enforce modern development practices including source control peer review CI/CD pipelines and automated build/test/deploy workflows (ex GitHub Actions).
• Leverage AI-assisted development tooling to accelerate delivery and improve personal productivity.
• Learn and apply layered data architecture patterns to organize data assets for reliability and reuse.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelorsdegree in Computer Science Information Systems or related fields.
• 3 years of experience in enterprise integration or data engineering roles(advanced degreescount towards years of experience).
• Experience with cloud data warehouse or Lakehouse platforms (ex Snowflake Databricks).
• Experience with relational (SQL) and non-relational (NoSQL) databases (ex PostgreSQL MySQL MongoDB DynamoDB)
• Exposure to data transformation tools (ex dbt).
• Proficiency in SQL and at least one general-purpose programming language (ex Python).
• Exposure to Enterprise Systems such as MRP CRM ERP etc.
• Foundational understanding of data modeling concepts (star schema normalization dimensional modeling).
• Familiarity with source control (Git) and basic CI/CD concepts.
• Ability to write clean documented code and a willingness to learn data quality testing practices.
• Understanding of software architecture principles data warehousing and ELT workflows.
• Capability to gather business requirements from stakeholders and take a project from initial concept to finished product.
• Ability to work with end users to rapidly iterate on prototype applications by solving end-user issues.
• Ability to translate technical concepts to non-technical audiences for stakeholders internal and external to the organization.

Preferred Skills and Qualifications

• Experience with database administration including schema design performance tuning and query optimization.
• Experience interfacing with engineering and manufacturing groups to understand system designs and translations to data needs.
• Experience supporting AI/ML pipelines including feature stores training data pipelines or model monitoring infrastructure.
• Experience in a start-up or similar high-growth environment.
• Familiarity with workflow orchestration tools (ex Airflow).
• Exposure to aerospace defense or pharmaceutical data environments.
• Experience working with ERP systems deployed in a design development environment.
• Exposure to Infrastructure as Code for cloud resource provisioning (e.g. Terraform).
• Relevant platform or tooling certifications (ex dbt Certified Developer cloud data platform certifications).

Compensation

• Data Engineer: $130000 - $160000
• Leveling and base salary are determined by job-related skills education level experience level and job
• performance
• You will be eligible for long-term incentives in the form of stock options and/or long-term cash awards
• Offer compensation also includes the ability to purchase company stock through the Employee Stock Purchase Plan

• Varda like all employers must ensure that its employees working in the United States are lawfully authorized to work in the U.S. Additionally our employees are exposed to and have access to certain export-controlled items. At present some of our technology to which employees have access requires a license to be exported to individuals other than U.S. Persons as defined in U.S. export regulations. Because our employees are provided access to export-controlled items our current policy is to only hire U.S. persons who are permitted to have access to our technology without an export license.

  US person means: U.S. citizen U.S. lawful permanent resident or protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3) (i.e. individual admitted to the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum in the U.S.)

  Learn more about the ITAR here.

Benefits