Junior Data Engineer

Sentinel Group is building and evolving reliable data pipelines and data services to support its product and engineering teams. In this hybrid role in Wakefield, MA, you will help develop batch ETL/ELT workflows, support data quality and release readiness, and collaborate across Business Analysts, Data Analysts, and Software Engineers under the guidance of senior engineers.

This Junior Data Engineer position focuses on hands-on delivery: extracting and transforming data from APIs, databases, and files, validating outputs, and troubleshooting pipeline issues with clear escalation when risks arise.

What you’ll do

• Collaborate with Business Analysts, Data Analysts, Software Engineers, and peers to understand requirements and deliver data solutions.
• Build, maintain, and enhance batch data pipelines and ETL/ELT workflows with guidance from senior engineers.
• Use SQL and scripts to extract, transform, validate, and load data from APIs, databases, and files.
• Help design and maintain datasets, tables, views, and data models for downstream applications, reporting, and analytics.
• Implement data quality checks, reconciliation steps, logging, and monitoring to support accurate, complete, timely, and available data.
• Troubleshoot pipeline and data issues, communicate blockers clearly, and escalate risks with useful diagnostic information.
• Support modernization of legacy data processes, moving toward secure, automated, cloud-based solutions aligned with CI.
• Contribute to code reviews, automated tests, build pipelines, documentation, runbooks, and other development and data operations practices.
• Assist with safe releases, backfills, and reprocessing by validating results and documenting changes.

What you’ll bring

• A commitment to building secure, maintainable, testable, and observable data systems.
• A growth mindset and willingness to learn from experienced engineers, analysts, and business partners.
• Foundational programming skills for data processing, automation, and integration work.
• Working knowledge of SQL, relational databases, and data transformation concepts.
• Familiarity with Python or another programming language used for scripting and data engineering.
• Understanding of how data quality, lineage, documentation, and governance support trusted data.
• Curiosity about how AI can responsibly improve engineering productivity, testing, documentation, and data quality.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Information Systems, Mathematics, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Academic, internship, project, or professional experience working with SQL, Python, databases, data analysis, or software development.
• Understanding of relational database concepts, data modeling fundamentals, and common ETL/ELT patterns.
• Experience or coursework using SQL to query, join, aggregate, and validate data.
• Familiarity with structured data formats and integrations, including CSV, JSON, and REST APIs.
• Foundational knowledge of AWS or another cloud platform, including storage, compute, and access-control concepts.
• Familiarity with version control, pull requests, automated testing, and build or deployment pipelines.
• Ability to work in a hybrid work environment, with one day in the office.
• Authorization to work in the US without current or future sponsorship.

Technologies

• SQL
• Python
• CSV
• JSON
• REST APIs
• AWS
• Git

Hybrid location

This is a hybrid role for the Wakefield, MA office with one day in-office per week, plus additional in-person trainings and workshops as needed.

Salary

• $85,000-$93,000 per year
• Compensation is calibrated to geographic location; the posted range may vary based on where you live.

Benefits

• PTO (vacation, sick, personal time bank)
• FTO (Flexible time off for vacation, sick and personal time) after 2 years of service
• 12 Paid Holidays (10 stated and 2 floating holidays)
• 2 Community Volunteer Days
• 5 Summer Half Days
• Medical, Dental, Vision
• Life Insurance
• LTD & STD
• Retirement Plan with 4% Employer Match
• Parental Leave

Nice to have

• Experience with git, build pipelines, auth, frontend testing