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About This Role
About Swingtech Swingtech delivers innovative Information Technology and Professional Support services to a diverse range of clients across the federal and intelligence communities. With over 15 years of trusted experience as a systems integrator, we apply agile methodologies and deep industry insight to help our customers achieve greater efficiency, compliance, and cost savings. At Swingtech, we’re committed to excellence and long-term success for our clients and our team. Position Summary
The AI/ML Data Engineer develops and sustains the secure data pipelines, data products, retrieval foundations, and governance controls that enable DOL’s AI/ML solutions. The position supports structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data sources used for analytics, AI/ML development, document intelligence, RAG, and production AI applications.
Essential Duties
- Design, build, test, deploy, and maintain scalable data pipelines for batch, streaming, near-real-time, and event-driven workloads.
- Integrate approved agency data sources, APIs, file stores, document repositories, relational databases, data lakes, data warehouses, and authorized external sources.
- Develop ETL/ELT pipelines for data extraction, validation, transformation, normalization, enrichment, de-identification, metadata management, and loading.
- Implement document-ingestion pipelines that support OCR, parsing, classification, metadata extraction, PII detection/redaction, chunking, embeddings, vector indexing, and retrieval workflows.
- Create and maintain data models, schemas, data dictionaries, metadata structures, catalog records, and data-quality controls.
- Implement data lineage, source provenance, dataset versioning, retention, access controls, and auditability for training, validation, evaluation, and production datasets.
- Preserve the separation of training, validation, and final evaluation datasets through controlled access, versioning, and documented lifecycle processes.
- Develop and monitor data-quality measures, including completeness, accuracy, timeliness, duplication, validity, freshness, distribution drift, and labeling quality.
- Apply data minimization, masking, encryption, access controls, de-identification, and least-privilege safeguards to PII, CUI, and other protected DOL data.
- Collaborate with AI/ML Engineers to optimize retrieval quality, embeddings, vector stores, hybrid search, reranking, citation traceability, and knowledge-base refresh processes.
- Develop data-pipeline runbooks, technical documentation, source inventories, lineage artifacts, data-quality reports, and operational support procedures.
- Support security, privacy, ATO, Responsible AI, incident response, MLOps, monitoring, and release-readiness activities.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, data engineering, data science, information systems, software engineering, mathematics, or a related technical discipline.
- At least four years of experience in data engineering, database development, analytics engineering, ETL/ELT development, data-platform implementation, or related work.
- Strong SQL and Python development skills.
- Experience designing data pipelines and integrating APIs, databases, file systems, cloud storage, data warehouses, or data lakes.
- Experience with data modeling, metadata, data quality, data lineage, data transformation, monitoring, and operational support.
- Familiarity with AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or equivalent cloud data services.
- Knowledge of secure data-handling practices, including access control, encryption, data masking, PII protection, and logging.
- Must be willing to work 3 days onsite at customer site in Washington, DC.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with AWS Glue, S3, Athena, Redshift, Lake Formation, Azure Data Factory, Azure Data Lake Storage, Databricks, Snowflake, BigQuery, or equivalent platforms.
- Experience with vector databases or vector-search capabilities, including OpenSearch, pgvector, Pinecone, Weaviate, Milvus, Chroma, FAISS, or similar tools.
- Experience with RAG, document intelligence, OCR, enterprise search, knowledge management, document classification, or content-ingestion pipelines.
- Familiarity with Federal data governance, FedRAMP, FISMA, NIST 800-53, NIST 800-171, CUI, Privacy Act, and records-management requirements.
Summary of Benefits* 15 PTO days
- 11 paid holidays
- Medical Insurance with – 3 options (HSA with $600 Employer Contribution).
- Dental Insurance with no age limit orthodonture.
- Vision Insurance through EyeMed in and out of network coverage.
- Short Term and Long-Term Disability coverage with 100% premium support,
- Life insurance and AD&D with 100% premium support
- Supplemental Life Insurance
- Critical Care and Accident Insurance availability
- Pet Insurance through Nationwide
- Employee Assistance Program
- 401k with enrollment from day one. 4% deferral by company.
- $1500 Annual Training Budget
- $1500 Referral bonus
- Eligibility for annual merit and discretionary bonus
- Flexible work arrangements
Equal Opportunity Employer Minority/Female/Veterans/Disabled
Role Details
About This Role
Data Engineers build the pipelines that feed AI models. They design ETL workflows, manage data lakes, and ensure training and inference data is clean, timely, and accessible. Without good data engineering, AI projects fail. It's that simple.
The AI era has expanded the data engineer's scope far beyond batch ETL jobs. You're building real-time embedding pipelines for RAG systems, managing vector databases, ensuring training data quality at scale, and building the infrastructure that lets ML teams iterate on data as fast as they iterate on models. Data quality is the biggest predictor of model quality, and you're the person responsible for it.
Across the 9,653 AI roles we're tracking, Data Engineer positions make up 1% of the market. At Swingtech Consulting Inc., this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
Data Engineer demand in AI contexts is strong and growing. Every company building AI needs clean, reliable data pipelines. The shift toward real-time AI applications (chatbots, recommendation engines, agent systems) means data engineering is more critical than ever. Companies are willing to pay premium salaries for data engineers with AI/ML pipeline experience.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week includes: debugging a data pipeline that's producing stale embeddings for the RAG system, optimizing a Spark job that processes training data, building a data quality monitoring dashboard, meeting with the ML team to understand their next data requirements, and writing dbt models that transform raw event data into ML-ready features. The work is deeply technical and high-impact.
Data Engineer demand in AI contexts is strong and growing. Every company building AI needs clean, reliable data pipelines. The shift toward real-time AI applications (chatbots, recommendation engines, agent systems) means data engineering is more critical than ever. Companies are willing to pay premium salaries for data engineers with AI/ML pipeline experience.
Skills Required
SQL, Python, and distributed systems (Spark, Airflow, dbt) are core. Cloud data platforms (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift) are increasingly standard. Many AI-focused roles also want familiarity with vector databases and embedding pipelines. Understanding data modeling, pipeline orchestration, and data quality frameworks covers the essentials.
AI-specific data engineering skills include: building feature stores, managing training data versioning, implementing data lineage tracking, and building real-time embedding pipelines. Experience with streaming systems (Kafka, Flink) is valuable for real-time AI applications. Understanding ML data requirements (balanced datasets, data augmentation, evaluation set construction) makes you much more effective working with ML teams.
Strong postings specify the data stack, mention ML pipeline work, and describe the scale of data you'll be working with. Look for companies that understand the connection between data quality and model quality. Avoid roles that conflate data engineering with data analysis.
Compensation Benchmarks
Data Engineer roles pay a median of $177,825 based on 160 positions with disclosed compensation. Mid-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $193,200.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $213,400. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,230. The 90th percentile reaches $319,400. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($253,100) and Research Engineer ($252,000). By seniority level: Entry: $110,408; Mid: $193,200; Senior: $228,700; Director: $272,275; VP: $235,000.
Swingtech Consulting Inc. AI Hiring
Swingtech Consulting Inc. has 3 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across Data Engineer, AI/ML Engineer. Based in Washington, DC, US.
Location Context
Across all AI roles, 6% (568 positions) offer remote work, while 9,010 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (2,878 roles, $221,000 median); San Francisco (2,413 roles, $264,500 median); Los Angeles (1,340 roles, $210,000 median).
Career Path
Common paths into Data Engineer roles include Backend Engineer, Database Administrator, Analytics Engineer.
From here, career progression typically leads toward Senior Data Engineer, ML Engineer, Data Platform Lead.
Master SQL and Python first. Then learn a distributed processing framework (Spark or its modern alternatives) and a pipeline orchestrator (Airflow, Dagster, Prefect). Build a portfolio project that demonstrates end-to-end pipeline construction: ingest, transform, validate, serve. If you want to specialize in AI data engineering, add vector databases and embedding pipelines to your skill set.
What to Expect in Interviews
Expect SQL deep-dives (query optimization, partitioning strategies, data modeling), Python coding focused on data pipeline patterns, and system design questions about building scalable ETL workflows. Companies with ML teams will ask about feature stores, embedding pipelines, and training data management. Be ready to discuss data quality monitoring, pipeline orchestration, and how you'd handle schema evolution in a production data lake.
When evaluating opportunities: Strong postings specify the data stack, mention ML pipeline work, and describe the scale of data you'll be working with. Look for companies that understand the connection between data quality and model quality. Avoid roles that conflate data engineering with data analysis.
AI Hiring Overview
The AI job market has 9,653 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 193 entry-level, 4,500 mid-level, 3,455 senior, and 1,505 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 6% of the market (568 positions). The remaining 9,010 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $213,400. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,230. The 90th percentile reaches $319,400. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($253,100 median, 57 roles); Research Engineer ($252,000 median, 419 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($251,622 median, 51 roles).
Data Engineer demand in AI contexts is strong and growing. Every company building AI needs clean, reliable data pipelines. The shift toward real-time AI applications (chatbots, recommendation engines, agent systems) means data engineering is more critical than ever. Companies are willing to pay premium salaries for data engineers with AI/ML pipeline experience.
The AI Job Market Today
The AI job market spans 9,653 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (7,301), Data Scientist (441), AI Software Engineer (438). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.
The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (193) are outnumbered by mid-level (4,500) and senior (3,455) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 1,505 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 6% of all AI roles (568 positions), with 9,010 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.
AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $213,400. Top-quartile roles start at $264,230, and the 90th percentile reaches $319,400. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.
Category matters for compensation. AI Safety roles lead at $253,100 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $141,440. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.
The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (1,605 postings), Aws (916 postings), Azure (724 postings), Rag (634 postings), Gcp (522 postings), Pytorch (495 postings), Kubernetes (384 postings), Claude (383 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
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