Principal Data Engineer - Location Flexible
Requisition ID # 172235
Job Category: Information Technology; Engineering / Science; Maintenance / Construction / Operations
Job Level: Manager/Principal
Business Unit: Strategy & Growth
Work Type: Hybrid
Job Location: Oakland; Alameda; Alta; American Canyon; Angels Camp; Antioch; Auberry; Auburn; Avenal; Avila Beach; Bakersfield; Balch Camp; Bay Point; Bear Valley; Belden; Bellota; Belmont; Benicia; Berkeley; Brentwood; Brisbane; Buellton; Burney; Buttonwillow; Calistoga; Campbell; Canyon Dam; Canyondam; Capitola; Caruthers; Chico; Clearlake; Clovis; Coalinga; Colusa; Concord; Concord; Corcoran; Cottonwood; Cupertino; Daly City; Danville; Davis; Dinuba; Downieville; Dublin; Emeryville; Eureka; Fairfield; Folsom; Fort Bragg; Fortuna; Fremont; French Camp; Fresno; Fresno; Fulton; Garberville; Geyserville; Gilroy; Goodyear; Grass Valley; Guerneville; Half Moon Bay; Hayward; Hinkley; Hollister; Holt; Huron; Jackson; Kerman; King City; Lakeport; Lemoore; Lincoln; Linden; Livermore; Lodi; Loomis; Los Banos; Lower Lake; Madera; Magalia; Manteca; Manton; Mariposa; Martell; Marysville; Maxwell; Menlo Park; Merced; Meridian; Millbrae; Milpitas; Modesto; Monterey; Montgomery Creek; Morgan Hill; Morro Bay; Moss Landing; Mountain View; Napa; Needles; Newark; Newman; Novato; Oakdale; Oakhurst; Oakley; Olema; Orinda; Orland; Oroville; Palo Alto; Palo Cedro; Paradise; Parkwood; Paso Robles; Petaluma; Pioneer; Pismo Beach; Pittsburg; Placerville; Pleasant Hill; Point Arena; Potter Valley; Quincy; Rancho Cordova; Red Bluff; Redding; Richmond; Ridgecrest; Rio Vista; Rocklin; Roseville; Round Mountain; Sacramento; Salida; Salinas; San Bruno; San Carlos; San Francisco; San Francisco; San Jose; San Luis Obispo; San Mateo; San Rafael; San Ramon; San Ramon; Sanger; Santa Cruz; Santa Maria; Santa Nella; Santa Rosa; Selma; Shaver Lake; Sonoma; Sonora; South San Francisco; Springville; Stockton; Storrie; Taft; Tracy; Turlock; Twain; Ukiah; Vacaville; Vallejo; Walnut Creek; Wasco; Watsonville; West Sacramento; Wheatland; Whitmore; Willits; Willow Creek; Willows; Windsor; Winters; Woodland; Yuba City
Position Summary
The Principal Data Engineer serves as a principal technical leader responsible for shaping, designing, and advancing enterprise-scale data infrastructure and data engineering solutions. This role leads the most complex and high-impact data and analytics initiatives, requiring deep technical expertise, broad system influence, and strong cross-functional collaboration.
The role provides thought leadership on data architecture, data quality, metadata management, and platform scalability. While not a people manager, the Principal Data Engineer forms and leads virtual teams, mentors engineers, and drives departmental standards and best practices.
The selected candidate must live within PG&E’s service territory.
PG&E is providing the salary range that the company in good faith believes it might pay for this position at the time of the job posting. This compensation range is specific to the locality of the job. The actual salary paid to an individual will be based on multiple factors, including, but not limited to, specific skills, education, licenses or certifications, experience, market value, geographic location, and internal equity. Although we estimate the successful candidate hired into this role will be placed towards the middle or entry point of the range, the decision will be made on a case-by-case basis related to these factors.
A reasonable salary range is:
Minimum Base Salary (Bay Area) $155,000.00
Mid Base Salary (Bay Area) $210,000.00
Maximum Base Salary (Bay Area) $265,000.00
Minimum Base Salary (California) $147,000.00
Mid Base Salary (California) $200,000.00
Maximum Base Salary (California) $252,000.00
Responsibilities
- Forms and leads cross-functional teams to address complex, enterprise-level data and analytics problems with broad business impact.
- Designs and advances enterprise data infrastructure ensuring scalability, reliability, and data quality.
- Partners with business units to translate complex requirements into integrated data solutions.
- Drives the development of departmental data engineering standards and best practices.
- Leads continuous improvement initiatives including performance optimization and automation.
- Provides hands-on guidance for complex, multi-platform technical challenges.
- Supports advanced analytics and machine learning deployment at scale.
- Mentors engineers and supports technical capability development across teams.
Qualifications
Minimum:
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, MIS, or related field of study, or equivalent experience.
- 10 years of experience with multiple data engineering/ETL ecosystems such as Palantir Foundry, Spark, Informatica, SAP BODS, OBIEE.
- Experience with multiple data engineering/ETL ecosystems.
- Proven track record of successfully implementing data warehouses/data lakes over previous five years.
- Experience leading development teams.
- 3 years of experience in machine learning algorithm deployment and machine learning operations.
Desired:
- Master’s degree in Computer Science or related discipline.
- Experience leading technical teams and enterprise-scale initiatives.
- Experience supporting machine learning operations.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills, including strong presentation capabilities.
- Customer service orientation with the ability to collaborate effectively across departments.
- Good analytical and strategic decision‑making ability.