Title: Data Engineer

Location: Remote (United States)

Reports to: VP of Data Science

Employment Type: Exempt / Full-Time

About StrongMind

StrongMind is a remote-first education and technology company on a mission to transform learning for students, families, and educators across the country. For more than 25 years, we’ve partnered with schools and districts to deliver innovative, student-centered learning experiences powered by technology, compassion, and bold thinking.

We believe education should be flexible, human, and built for real life. That belief shapes how we design our products, support our partners, and work together as a team. At StrongMind, you’ll find smart people doing meaningful work, a culture rooted in trust and accountability, and leaders who genuinely care about both outcomes and people.

The Team You Will Join

You’ll be part of the Data Platform team, working closely with the VP of Data Science, CTO, and product engineering leadership. This team is responsible for building and evolving StrongMind’s next-generation data platform, transitioning from traditional analytics systems to a real-time, event-driven, AI-native architecture.

The team culture is highly collaborative, innovative, and high-impact, with opportunities to influence foundational platform decisions and shape how data powers product experiences across the organization.

The Difference You Will Make

In this role, your work will directly impact product innovation, AI capabilities, and data-driven decision-making across StrongMind. You’ll help design and build a modern data platform that supports real-time processing, advanced analytics, and AI-powered features. Your contributions will shape how data is captured, structured, and utilized—enabling everything from learner intelligence to production-grade AI systems. This is a high-ownership role where your work will have visible, long-term impact across the company.

A Typical Day Looks Like

While no two days are exactly the same, you can expect to:

• Design and implement data pipelines, including change data capture (CDC) and event-driven architectures.
• Build and maintain data systems across lakehouse and warehouse environments (e.g., S3, Snowflake, Redshift).
• Develop transformation pipelines using tools like dbt and orchestration frameworks such as Dagster or Airflow.
• Partner with engineering, product, and AI teams to define data models, contracts, and platform capabilities.
• Support AI and graph-based systems, including data pipelines for machine learning and real-time inference.
• Create technical documentation, including architecture decision records (ADRs) and operational runbooks.
• Monitor and support production data systems, ensuring reliability, performance, and scalability.
• This position requires availability to work core business hours of 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM Arizona time, Monday through Friday.

This role balances deep technical execution with cross-functional collaboration and is well-suited for someone who enjoys building scalable systems, solving complex problems, and driving innovation in data and AI.

Your Expertise Includes

We’re looking for someone who brings:

• 3+ years of experience building and maintaining production data platforms.
• Strong SQL skills, including schema design, optimization, and performance tuning.
• Strong Python experience for data engineering, including testing and production workflows.
• Experience with streaming and CDC technologies (e.g., Kafka, Kinesis, Debezium).
• Experience with dbt and orchestration tools such as Dagster, Airflow, or Prefect.
• Solid AWS experience, including services such as S3, RDS/Aurora, Lambda, EventBridge, and ECS/EKS.
• Experience with data modeling across transactional, analytical, and event-based systems.
• Ability to operate independently with high ownership in a remote-first environment.

Bonus points if you also have:

• Experience with graph databases or graph data modeling.
• Familiarity with vector databases or feature stores.
• Experience designing multi-tenant data architectures.
• Knowledge of K–12 data compliance standards (e.g., FERPA, COPPA).
• Experience in EdTech, LMS platforms, or student information systems.

Our Commitment to Inclusion & Belonging:

We believe the best ideas come from bringing together people with different perspectives, experiences, and ways of thinking. We are committed to welcoming a broad range of talent and encouraging all qualified individuals to apply. We strive to create an environment where everyone feels a sense of belonging and is empowered to contribute, grow, and do meaningful work.

How We'll Take Care of You:

We believe that when people feel supported, they do their best work.

Our commitment to you includes:

• A competitive total compensation package, including medical, dental, vision, and voluntary benefits

• Well-being that works for real life—from an on-site gym, virtual wellness programs, and wellness coaching to flexible work options for select roles, because your well-being fuels your brilliance
• Unlimited PTO for salaried roles and “life happens” days when you need flexibility
• A fully paid holiday week off at Christmas, so you can truly rest, reset, and reconnect
• Recognition and rewards that celebrate birthdays, meaningful anniversary milestones, and community service hours that let you give back
• Quarterly Town Halls that keep communication transparent, honest, and human
• Annual social events and traditions we genuinely look forward to—like Halloween celebrations, Wellness Fairs, and other moments that bring our community together

We’re intentional about building a workplace where people feel valued, connected, and empowered to thrive—at work and beyond.

Additional Info:

We welcome all qualified candidates eligible to work in the United States.  At this time, we are unable to sponsor visas.

We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer and provide consideration to all applicants regardless of race, religion, color, sex, gender, national origin, age, veteran status, marital status, or disability protected by law.