Palantir Data Engineer

Guidehouse Inc. seeks a Palantir Data Engineer in Washington, DC onsite to design, build, and operate ontology-driven data products in Palantir Foundry, focusing on semantic modeling, governance, and ontology-backed analytics for case management and operations.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and maintain Palantir Foundry ontologies, covering entities, relationships, properties, actions, and permissions.
• Convert business processes and domain requirements into clear, reusable entity-relationship models.
• Maintain semantic consistency across datasets by enforcing standardized definitions, naming conventions, and relationship patterns.
• Evolve ontologies over time while preserving lineage, backward compatibility, and data contracts.
• Build ingestion pipelines into Foundry from APIs, relational databases, object storage, file drops, and external partners.
• Develop transformation logic to materialize ontological entities and relationships from raw and curated data.
• Implement incremental processing and change data capture to keep ontology-backed data current.
• Optimize pipeline performance and reliability while preserving clear separation between raw, curated, and ontology-backed layers.
• Produce analysis-ready datasets powering case views, entity timelines, dashboards, cohort analyses, and trend reporting.
• Enable self-service analytics by ensuring ontology-backed datasets are intuitive, well-documented, and reusable.
• Support both human workflows (case review, operations) and analytical/ML consumption from the same semantic foundation.
• Document datasets and entities with owners, descriptions, and business definitions.
• Maintain end-to-end data lineage from source systems through transformations into ontological entities.
• Implement policy-based access controls and secure handling aligned to compliance requirements.
• Operationalize data quality checks for freshness, completeness, and validity tied to mission-critical entities.
• Monitor pipelines and ontology-backed datasets using metrics, logs, and alerts.
• Troubleshoot failures, perform root-cause analysis, and apply preventive improvements.
• Support environment promotion practices (DEV, TEST, PRE-PROD, PROD) with repeatable and auditable processes.
• Collaborate with platform engineering, security, analytics, and application teams to align ontology design with operational needs.
• Communicate complex ontology and data concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Participate in design and architecture reviews related to ontology evolution and data modeling standards.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree is required.
• Minimum of 3 years building and operating production data pipelines and data models.
• Hands-on experience with Palantir Foundry, or strong data engineering background with the ability to ramp quickly.
• Palantir Foundry Ontology experience including entity and relationship modeling.
• Palantir Foundry Ontology experience including ontology-backed actions and workflows.
• Palantir Foundry Ontology experience including permissioning and governance within the ontology.
• Strong SQL proficiency and experience with at least one data engineering language (Python preferred; Scala/Java acceptable).
• Experience implementing ETL/ELT pipelines, incremental processing, and transformation best practices.
• Familiarity with governance fundamentals including metadata, lineage, access controls, and data quality.
• Strong communication skills and experience working directly with product and mission stakeholders.

Technologies

• Palantir Foundry
• Palantir Foundry Ontology
• SQL
• Python
• Scala
• Java
• Databricks
• Spark

Salary

$113,000 - $188,000 per year

Benefits

• Medical, prescription drug, dental, and vision insurance
• Personal and family sick time plus company-paid holidays
• Discretionary variable incentive bonus eligibility
• Parental leave and adoption assistance
• 401(k) retirement plan
• Basic and supplemental life insurance
• Health Savings Account, dental/vision, and dependent care flexible spending accounts
• Short-term and long-term disability insurance
• Student loan payoff assistance
• Tuition reimbursement and opportunities for personal development
• Skills development and certifications
• Employee referral program
• Corporate-sponsored events and community outreach
• Emergency back-up childcare program
• Mobility stipend

Travel Required

Up to 25%

Clearance Required

Ability to Obtain Public Trust

What you will need

• Bachelor’s degree is required.
• Minimum of 3 years building and operating production data pipelines and data models.
• Hands-on Palantir Foundry experience, or strong data engineering background with the ability to ramp quickly.
• Palantir Foundry Ontology experience including entity and relationship modeling.
• Palantir Foundry Ontology experience including ontology-backed actions and workflows.
• Palantir Foundry Ontology experience including permissioning and governance within the ontology.
• Strong SQL proficiency and experience with at least one data engineering language (Python preferred; Scala/Java acceptable).
• Experience implementing ETL/ELT pipelines, incremental processing, and transformation best practices.
• Familiarity with governance fundamentals including metadata, lineage, access controls, and data quality.
• Strong communication skills and experience working directly with product and mission stakeholders.

What would be nice to have

• Palantir Application Developer experience building operational applications and workflows on top of the ontology.
• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field or equivalent practical experience.
• Palantir AIP experience including ontology-backed document understanding and summarization; entity extraction and enrichment; human-in-the-loop review with governance controls.
• Generative AI assisted coding experience, such as AI copilots for pipelines, transformations, ontology evolution, and code review; applying generative AI to boost developer productivity while maintaining data quality and governance.
• Experience supporting ontology-first designs for case management systems.
• Knowledge of entity resolution, relationship extraction, and graph-based modeling.
• Familiarity with Databricks, Spark, or lakehouse architectures in hybrid environments.
• Exposure to CI/CD practices for data pipelines and ontology changes.