Principal Data Engineer

Location: Houston, TX Only Locals Inperson Interview

Key Accountabilities: Define and maintain the enterprise data and database strategy, including principles, standards, reference architectures, target-state roadmaps, measurable outcomes, ownership models, and architecture decision criteria for Aurora PostgreSQL topology, resilience, security, observability, and cost optimization. Own conceptual, logical, and physical data models aligned to business capabilities, enterprise standards, domain boundaries, canonical definitions, master/reference data, and target-state architecture. Lead SQL Server discovery, assessment, and migration planning across schemas, stored procedures, functions, triggers, jobs, data quality, security, and operational readiness. Own data movement, change data capture, reconciliation, cutover, rollback, stabilization, post-migration validation, and production readiness across source and target systems. Define database engineering standards for infrastructure as code, schema-as-code, version control, migration scripts, release management, automated compliance checks, quality gates, and performance validation. Partner with application and platform teams to improve maintainability, including placement of business logic, indexing, query optimization, partitioning, connection management, workload isolation, and performance tuning. Lead, mentor, and coordinate cross-functional delivery while chairing design reviews, resolving technical issues, documenting key decisions, communicating risks and trade-offs, providing hands‐on support for complex challenges, and building reusable standards, templates, accelerators, and knowledge‐transfer materials.

Skills and Experience: Extensive experience in enterprise data architecture, database architecture, data modeling, and large‐scale database modernization. Proven experience leading SQL Server to PostgreSQL or Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL migrations in complex enterprise environments. Advanced conceptual, logical, and physical data modeling skills, including proficiency with enterprise modeling tools such as ER/Studio. Deep knowledge of SQL Server and PostgreSQL internals, SQL dialects, data types, stored code conversion, indexing, execution plans, transactions, locking, and performance tuning. Hands‐on experience with migration assessment, schema conversion, bulk load, change data capture, reconciliation, cutover, rollback, and stabilization planning. Strong working knowledge of AWS database and migration services, including Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, AWS Database Migration Service, and schema conversion or assessment tooling. Ability to establish database and data standards across governance, metadata, lineage, data quality, master/reference data, security, resilience, observability, and operational readiness.