Data Engineer Principal (Enterprise Data Group)

FedEx is seeking a senior Data Engineering Principal to serve as the enterprise technical authority for data engineering initiatives within the Enterprise Data Group. Based in the Memphis, TN area as a hybrid role, this position focuses on architecting governed, cloud-native data platforms and leading the standards, reliability, and engineering execution behind large-scale batch and streaming pipelines.

In this role, you will translate analytics and operational priorities into scalable architecture blueprints, oversee production deployment integrity, and mentor engineers across multi-disciplinary squads working on enterprise data products.

Responsibilities

• Translate business analytics requirements, reporting needs, and strategic operational initiatives into scalable, cloud-native data architecture blueprints and reusable technical reference models.
• Lead the technical design and standardization of enterprise data lakehouse architectures using the medallion model (Raw/Bronze, Conformed/Silver, and Curated/Gold), including dimensional schemas, analytical aggregates, and unified semantic layers.
• Design, build, and govern reusable data engineering assets, frameworks, and deployment templates to accelerate delivery and improve consistency across distributed teams.
• Set architectural standards for decoupled publish/subscribe patterns, event-driven architectures, and API-first data accessibility.
• Architect and oversee implementation of resilient, high-throughput ingestion pipelines spanning legacy databases, ERP/TMS operational applications, mainframe transaction systems, and message queues such as Apache Kafka and JMS relays.
• Design and optimize scalable, fault-tolerant transformation layers using distributed computing engines (Apache Spark/PySpark, Dataproc) and analytics engineering frameworks such as dbt and modular SQL.
• Establish standards for enterprise DAG orchestration using Apache Airflow or Cloud Composer, including deterministic scheduling, automated backfills, lineage capture, and disaster recovery capabilities.
• Independently design and deploy complex parsers, validators, transformers, and correlators to address multi-domain conformance and support execution from smaller models to cluster-scale processing.
• Implement automated data validation, ingestion-boundary contract enforcement, anomaly detection, and schema evolution controls using tools such as Great Expectations and data contracts to maintain enterprise data integrity.
• Embed automated metadata registration, catalog discovery, and end-to-end data lineage tracking throughout pipeline lifecycles for auditability and traceability from ingestion to consumption.
• Partner with Information Security to architect and enforce enterprise data security standards, including column/row-level security, data masking/tokenization, encryption in transit/at rest, and granular RBAC/ABAC models.
• Audit and implement optimization patterns for storage, cluster compute resources, partitioning, and clustering strategies to support performance SLAs and improve cloud cost efficiency.
• Promote modern software engineering and DataOps practices, including automated testing suites, CI/CD pipelines, and Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC).
• Lead release reviews, capacity planning, and deployment governance for critical high-volume pipelines transitioning to 24/7 production.
• Serve as a premier escalation engineer to troubleshoot complex distributed computing issues including performance regressions, network latency, and memory/serialization failures.
• Coach and mentor junior, mid-level, and senior data engineers, strengthening an engineering culture focused on craftsmanship and continuous learning.
• Conduct deep architectural assessments and PR code reviews to uphold high standards of data and software engineering hygiene.
• Act as a strategic technical liaison between Engineering Management, Enterprise Architecture, Data Science, Business Intelligence, Product Management, and Cyber Security to negotiate technical trade-offs and drive platform adoption.
• Evaluate emerging tools, storage formats, and frameworks to ensure FedEx maintains modern, competitive capabilities for large-scale data processing.
• Day-to-day involvement includes code reviews, large-scale deployments, and oversight, along with mentoring junior engineers to support continued up-skilling.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in information systems, Computer Science, or a quantitative discipline such as Mathematics or Engineering and/or equivalent formal training or work experience.
• Seven (7) years (or equivalent) experience in measurement and analysis, quantitative business problem solving, simulation development, and/or predictive analytics.
• Extensive knowledge in data engineering and machine learning frameworks, including design, development, and implementation of highly complex systems and data pipelines.
• Extensive knowledge in information systems, including design, development, and implementation of large batch or online transaction-based systems.
• Strong understanding of the transportation industry, competitors, and evolving technologies.
• Experience providing expert leadership in a general planning or consulting setting.
• Experience as a leader or senior member of multi-functional project teams.
• Excellent interpersonal skills and the ability to communicate effectively to senior audiences.
• A related advanced degree may offset related experience requirements.

Technologies

• Apache Kafka, JMS, Kafka Connect, Google Cloud Pub/Sub
• Apache Spark, PySpark, Dataproc, Databricks
• dbt, modular SQL
• Apache Airflow, Cloud Composer
• Great Expectations
• Docker, Terraform
• Git, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Jenkins
• Google BigQuery, Snowflake
• Kimball, Inmon, Data Vault, Medallion Architecture, Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake
• Parquet, Google Cloud Storage, AWS S3
• Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, DB2
• Scala, Python, Java
• RBAC, ABAC

Location and Work Model

• Hybrid position located in Memphis, TN; Plano, TX; or Pittsburgh, PA.
• Candidates must live within 50 miles of the campus location.
• Employees will work at the FedEx campus location several times per week.

Pay

• Plano and Pittsburgh: $11,766.26/mo to $15,884.45/mo
• Memphis: $11,177.95/mo to $15,090.23/mo

Application Details

• Upload a current resume (Microsoft Word or PDF format only) and answer the job screening questionnaire.
• Reasonable accommodations are available for qualified individuals throughout the application process. Contact [email protected] for accommodations.
• Applicants have rights under federal employment laws including Know Your Rights, Pay Transparency, FMLA, and the Employee Polygraph Protection Act.
• FedEx participates in the E-Verify program. E-Verify and Right to Work notices are provided (English/Spanish where applicable).

Minimum Education

• Bachelor’s degree in information systems, Computer Science, or a quantitative discipline such as Mathematics or Engineering and/or equivalent formal training or work experience. Directly related PhD preferred.