Principal Data Engineer

Location(s)

Details

Kemper is one of the nations leading specialized insurers. Our success is a direct reflection of the talented and diverse people who make a positive difference in the lives of our customers every day. We believe a high-performing culture valuable opportunities for personal development and professional challenge and a healthy work-life balance can be highly motivating and productive. Kempers products and services are making a real difference to our customers who have unique and evolving needs. By joining our team you are helping to provide an experience to our stakeholders that delivers on our promises.

Position Summary:

The Principal Data Engineer serves as a senior technical leader responsible for architecting developing and governing enterprise-scale data platforms pipelines and analytics solutions. This role provides hands-on technical leadership across data engineering initiatives cloud modernization efforts real-time integrations and enterprise data strategy.

The ideal candidate combines deep expertise in modern data engineering technologies with strong leadership capabilities to guide engineering teams establish best practices and deliver scalable secure and high-performing data solutions that support analytics reporting AI/ML and operational business functions.

Position Responsibilities:

Enterprise Data Architecture & Engineering

• Design development and optimize enterprise-scale data pipelines and integration frameworks supporting analytics reporting operational and AI/ML workloads.
• Architect scalable data lake warehouse and real-time streaming solutions using cloud-native technologies.
• Design and maintain logical and physical data models aligned with enterprise architecture standards and normalization best practices.
• Build robust ingestion transformation orchestration and delivery pipelines across structured and semi-structured data sources.
• Architect cross-functional data solutions that integrate data from core insurance systems (e.g. policy admin claims billing CRM) and third-party sources.

Technical Leadership

• Serve as the technical lead for data engineering initiatives and provide architectural guidance across engineering teams.
• Mentor and coach junior and mid-level engineers while promoting engineering excellence and continuous improvement.
• Establish best practices for coding standards CI/CD infrastructure as code monitoring observability and operational support.
• Lead design reviews technical solutioning sessions and enterprise architecture discussions.

Cloud & Platform Engineering

• Develop cloud-native data solutions using AWS Azure and modern data platforms including Snowflake Spark Kafka Airflow Glue and related technologies.
• Drive modernization initiatives involving hybrid-cloud and multi-cloud architectures.
• Build reusable frameworks and automation solutions to improve scalability reliability and engineering productivity.

Data Integration & Processing

• Integrate enterprise data from core operational systems third-party vendors APIs and streaming platforms.
• Develop and optimize ETL/ELT pipelines using SQL Informatica/IICS Python Spark and cloud-native processing tools.
• Ensure high-performance query optimization workload tuning and efficient data processing across enterprise platforms.

Governance Security & Compliance

• Ensure compliance with enterprise security standards governance policies and regulatory requirements including HIPAA SOX GDPR and NAIC standards applicable.
• Implement data quality metadata management lineage auditing and observability capabilities.
• Partner with cybersecurity governance and compliance teams to enforce secure and compliant data engineering practices.

Leadership & Collaboration

• Collaborate with architects analysts actuaries data scientists developers and business stakeholders to deliver scalable and trusted data solutions.
• Translate complex business requirements into enterprise data architectures and engineering solutions.
• Support strategic initiatives including underwriting analytics claims automation customer analytics and regulatory reporting.
• Provide technical mentorship and architectural oversight to junior and mid-level engineers across teams.

Position Qualifications:

• 10 years of experience in data engineering data architecture or software engineering.
• Expert-level experience with SQL Python Snowflake and enterprise ETL/ELT frameworks.
• Hands-on experience with cloud-native data engineering tools and platforms (e.g. AWS Glue S3 Snowflake Kafka Airflow).
• Proven experience leading large-scale enterprise data initiatives and mentoring engineering teams.
• Strong understanding of data governance security scalability and performance optimization.
• Experience working in regulated industries and understanding data privacy security and compliance frameworks.
• Strong understanding of insurance industry data (especially P&C and Life domains) including data from policy admin systems (e.g. Guidewire Life/400) claims platforms and actuarial models.
• Insurance industry experience (P&C and/or Life) preferred.
• Experience with real-time streaming and event-driven architecture a plus.
• Experience in Spark Kafka Airflow DBT and Infrastructure as Code frameworks preferred.
• Familiarity with DevOps and CI/CD pipelines for data engineering platforms.
• Experience in working with IDMC/IICS or DBT a plus
• Experience in Data warehousing with Data vault 2.0 preferred
• Knowledge of Git for version control and collaboration.
• Bachelors or masters degree in computer science Engineering Information Systems Data Science or related fields or equivalent work experience.
• This position can be worked hybrid out of a local Kemper office including Chicago or Downers Grove IL. Remote working arrangements may be available to non-local candidates.
• Sponsorship is not accepted for this opportunity.

The range for this position is $111900 to $186700. When determining candidate offers we consider experience skills education certifications and geographic location among other factors. This job is eligible for an annual discretionary bonus and Kemper benefits (Medical Dental Vision PTO 401k etc.)

Kemper is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race color religion sex sexual orientation gender identity national origin veteran disability status or any other status protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate. We are committed to supporting diversity and equality across our organization and we work diligently to maintain a workplace free from discrimination.

Kemper does not accept unsolicited resumes through or from search firms or staffing agencies. All unsolicited resumes will be considered the property of Kemper and Kemper will not be obligated to pay a placement fee.

Kemper will never request personal information such as your social security number or banking information via text or email. Additionally Kemper does not use external messaging applications like WireApp or Skype to communicate with candidates. If you receive such a message delete it.

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