Principal Data Engineer

Job Description

We deliver the best GIS solutions in the world, with the brightest minds on the map.

What are the issues that matter most to you? Climate change, national security, disaster response?

At Esri Australia you'll work with people at the forefront of these issues, connect them with the best tech and solutions and get an inside look into the real-world challenges that shape our future.

We turn problems into opportunities, and that takes two things:

• The most powerful GIS technology and solutions.
• Driven, talented, and passionately curious people.

Here we connect them, and that’s how we achieve incredible things for communities, economies, and for your career.

About the Role

As our Principal Data Engineer, you'll play a key role in shaping the future of Esri Australia's enterprise data capability. You will provide technical leadership for our enterprise data platform while remaining hands-on in the design and delivery of modern data solutions. While this role is not customer-facing, you'll work closely with employees, business leaders and subject matter experts across the organisation to understand their needs and deliver data solutions that support better decision-making and business outcomes.

This is an opportunity to influence strategy, improve business outcomes, and build scalable, secure and reliable data services across the organisation.

Some major responsibilities:

• Lead the evolution of Esri Australia's enterprise data architecture, platform strategy and technology roadmap.
• Design, build and maintain scalable data platforms, pipelines, semantic models and enterprise data products.
• Partner with business stakeholders and subject matter experts to understand priorities and co-design practical data solutions.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, including Microsoft Fabric, Snowflake and Azure data services, to improve performance, scalability and value.
• Drive data quality, governance, metadata, lineage and access management practices across the organisation.
• Ensure security, privacy and compliance requirements are embedded into platform design and operations.
• Monitor platform performance, reliability and cost efficiency while identifying opportunities for continuous improvement.
• Collaborate with technology, cybersecurity and business teams to support integrations, releases and operational excellence.
• Develop clear technical documentation, standards and knowledge resources that support long-term sustainability and shared ownership.

About You

You're an experienced data engineering professional who enjoys balancing strategic thinking with hands-on delivery. You can navigate complex business challenges, influence stakeholders and create practical solutions that deliver measurable value. You'll thrive in an environment where ownership, curiosity and continuous improvement are highly valued.

What we’re looking for:

• Proven experience designing, delivering and supporting enterprise data platforms in Snowflake or similar cloud-based environments (Fabric, Databricks).
• Strong SQL skills and experience using Python or similar scripting languages for data engineering and automation.
• Deep understanding of enterprise data architecture, data warehousing, dimensional modelling, ETL/ELT frameworks and modern integration patterns.
• Ability to translate business needs into well-designed, scalable and supportable data solutions.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to explain technical concepts to a range of audiences.
• Strong knowledge of data quality, governance, observability, metadata, lineage and secure data management practices.
• Experience working autonomously, managing competing priorities and delivering outcomes with minimal supervision.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capability with a focus on continuous improvement.
• Relevant qualifications in Information Technology, Computer Science, Data Engineering or a related discipline, or equivalent industry experience.
• A cleared police check is required prior commencement.
• We must hold current permanent and full-time working rights in Australia.
• Attitude and behaviour align with Esri Australia's core values..

Discover how our values shape our impact, your journey begins with one click here: Our people.

No recruitment agencies please.

We are managing this recruitment process internally and will not accept unsolicited CVs or candidate introductions from agencies.

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