COMPANY OVERVIEW
At Accelerate Learning, we’re dedicated to engaging and inspiring STEM education for PreK-12. Our mission is to spark curiosity in the STEM classroom with programs designed by experienced teachers and STEM experts. Supporting over 9 million students and 750,000 teachers, we constantly adapt to educators’ needs and customer feedback to promote powerful teaching strategies that shape the future of STEM learning.
“For teachers, by teachers” is not a slogan—it’s a fact. Our award-winning product, STEMscopes, was incubated in the classroom and developed by over 200 teachers, science experts, and science professors.
We’re scaling rapidly and investing in cutting-edge cloud technologies, AI, and modern software practices to bring STEM education into the future. Join us, and your work will directly shape how millions of students learn.
POSITION SUMMARY
As a Senior Data Engineer, you will play a critical role in building, evolving and operating ALI’s cloud‑native data platform.
You will build and deliver governed lakehouse systems and reliable batch and streaming data pipelines that support analytics, product intelligence, operational reporting, and customer‑facing data capabilities.
This role requires deep experience with data engineering, distributed data processing, secure data management, and automation. You’ll collaborate closely with engineers, architects, and product teams to deliver well‑structured, reliable data solutions that advance ALI’s mission.
Why Accelerate Learning?
- Purpose-driven work: Every data product supports teachers and inspires students.
- Modern stack: Cloud-native, serverless, data mesh, event driven, IaC, AI technologies.
- Growth opportunities: Partner with product and engineering leaders; influence architecture and standards at platform scale.
We are looking for team players who thrive in a collaborative agile environment and are eager to contribute to our mission of transforming STEM education.
POSITION RESPONSIBILITIES
Key responsibilities include:
Data Platform Engineering
- Design, build, and maintain scalable batch and streaming pipelines using AWS services including AppFlow, Lambda, Kinesis, Firehose, and EventBridge
- Build and optimize SQL-based analytical layers in Athena, including curated dimensional models (e.g., star schema) and reusable data marts
- Develop high-quality ETL/ELT workflows using S3, dbt (SQL) and AWS Glue (PySpark)
- Maintain and extend our data mesh, including cross‑domain access policies and fine‑grained permissions
Analytics & Visualization Enablement
- Partner with stakeholders to deliver high-quality datasets and semantic layers for reporting and self-service analytics
- Support and optimize data delivery into QuickSight, ensuring performance, correctness, and usability
Data APIs
- Design, build, and support real‑time and batch data APIs that serve customer‑facing applications
- Ensure API-backed data products are reliable, scalable, and secure
Operational Excellence
- Contribute to infrastructure automation using Pulumi (IaC) to provision and manage data platform resources
- Use Docker for containerized tooling and repeatable local/dev execution
- Proactively optimize for reliability, performance, and cost, identifying bottlenecks and driving remediation
- Implement strong operational practices: monitoring/alerting, runbooks, incident response participation, and continuous improvement
- Support secure handling of educational content and student interaction data
Collaboration & Technical Leadership
- Collaborate closely with engineers, analysts, product teams, and architects to translate business needs into durable data solutions
- Provide technical leadership through design reviews, mentoring, and establishing best practices and standards
POSITION QUALIFICATIONS
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or equivalent experience
- 5+ years of professional experience in data engineering, big data, or cloud data platforms
- Proficiency in Python; advanced SQL and data modeling
- Expertise with AWS tools such as S3, Lambda, AWS Glue, and IAM
- Skilled in API development and data pipeline orchestration
- Familiarity with DevOps practices and Infrastructure as Code (e.g., Pulumi, CDK, Docker)
- Strong problem-solving and architectural design skills, with the ability to anticipate challenges and drive long-term solutions
- Excellent communicator with experience collaborating across engineering, product, and business stakeholders
