Lead AI & Data Analytics Engineer - Must be government clearance eligible

NavAide

$130K — $150K *
Education, Government & Non-Profit
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5+ years of experience in data analytics or engineering, focused on AI and business intelligence.
  • Proven expertise in building products in Palantir Foundry and familiarity with Advana or similar federal environments.
  • Strong skills in SQL, Python, and TypeScript/JavaScript for data manipulation and analytics development.
  • Experience with modern data technologies like Databricks, Spark, or Snowflake for building data pipelines and architectures.
  • Understanding of data governance, quality standards, and ethical AI practices.
  • Excellent communication and stakeholder engagement skills, particularly in a client-facing context.
  • Bachelor's degree in a related technical field or equivalent experience.

Responsibilities

  • Lead design and development of AI-driven analytics products for procurement processes.
  • Build and maintain data dashboards and analytics applications using key platforms.
  • Access and analyze data within federal environments to enhance analytics capabilities.
  • Develop and manage ETL/ELT pipelines for data preparation and transformation.
  • Design comprehensive big data architectures that meet compliance and interoperability requirements.
  • Integrate advanced AI features into analytics workflows to support decision-making.
  • Collaborate with stakeholders to identify and address business problems with data solutions.

Benefits

  • Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage.
  • Flexible time off to promote work-life balance.
  • Professional development opportunities to support career advancement.
  • 401(K) matching to assist with future financial planning.
  • Company perks including wellness initiatives and flex spending options.
Full Job Description
How You Will Make an Impact:

We are seeking a proactive Lead AI & Data Analytics Engineer to support a federal acquisition process modernization effort. This individual will serve as the technical and functional lead for building AI-enabled analytics products using Palantir Foundry, Microsoft Power Platform, Advana, Jupiter, and Databricks.

This is not a traditional dashboard developer role. The successful candidate must be a self-starter who can engage directly with business stakeholders, understand acquisition and contract writing processes, identify high-value use cases, connect data across platforms, and deliver decision-support capabilities with limited oversight.

The ideal candidate will help the client move from static reporting to integrated, AI-enabled analytics that generate actionable insights, identify risk, improve visibility, and support better acquisition decision-making.

Key Responsibilities:
  • Lead the design, development, and delivery of AI-enabled analytics products supporting acquisition and contract writing operations.
  • Build and maintain data products, dashboards, workflows, and analytical applications using Palantir Foundry and Microsoft Power Platform.
  • Work within Advana and Jupiter environments to access, analyze, and connect relevant data sources to Palantir Foundry and Power Platform solutions.
  • Develop data pipelines, reusable data models, and analytics layers using Databricks, SQL, Python, PySpark, or similar tools.
  • Build and maintain ETL/ELT pipelines in Foundry's Pipeline Builder and Code Repositories - from raw ingest through staging to curated, production-ready datasets
  • Design end-to-end big data architectures across cloud implementations of Foundry, including data lakes, pipelines, warehouses, and analytics platforms; apply Foundry's open architecture principles to ensure interoperability with existing IT systems and meet organizational and compliance requirements
  • Integrate AI, machine learning, natural language processing, generative AI, or automated insight-generation capabilities into analytics products and workflows.
  • Identify, prioritize, and drive analytics and AI use cases from concept through delivery.
  • Partner with acquisition, contracting, program, and technical stakeholders to understand business problems and translate them into data and AI solutions.
  • Develop AI-enabled capabilities such as natural language querying, automated leadership summaries, risk indicators, anomaly detection, trend analysis, workload forecasting, and decision-support recommendations.
  • Build dashboards and reports that provide insight into contract writing activity, workload, procurement status, cycle times, data quality, system adoption, bottlenecks, and operational risk.
  • Support data integration across contract writing, procurement, financial, program, and operational data sources.
  • Validate AI-generated outputs against source data, business rules, and subject matter expert feedback.
  • Establish standards for data quality, governance, documentation, and responsible AI use.
  • Provide technical direction to junior or support-level data analytics staff.
  • Present findings, prototypes, dashboards, and recommendations to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Required Qualifications:
  • 5+ years of experience in data analytics, data engineering, platform engineering, business intelligence, AI/ML, or analytics product development.
  • Experience building analytics products in Palantir Foundry.
  • Experience working with Advana, Jupiter, or similar federal/DoD data environments.
  • Strong experience with SQL, Python, TypeScript/JavaScript.
  • Hands-on expertise with one or more modern data engineering, analytics, or data platform technologies (e.g. Databricks, Spark, Kafka, Hadoop, Snowflake, Azure Data Factory, AWS Glue, Apache NiFi, Delta Lake).
  • Experience integrating and transforming data from multiple sources and translating business requirements into data products, dashboards, AI use cases, and technical solutions.
  • Experience applying AI, machine learning, NLP, generative AI, semantic search, or natural language querying to business or operational data.
  • Strong understanding of data governance, data quality, access control, and responsible AI practices.
  • Demonstrated ability to lead use cases, manage ambiguity, and deliver results with limited oversight.
  • Strong client-facing communication skills and stakeholder engagement skills.
  • Eligible to obtain a U.S. Government clearance
  • Experience with Microsoft Power Platform, including Power BI; Power Apps and Power Automate.
  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Engineering, Information Systems, Mathematics, Physics, or a related technical field, or equivalent experience.

Preferred Qualifications

Travel
Up to 10% travel, depending on environment cutovers, stakeholder design sessions, and validation/test events.

Education

What We Offer

Navaide is committed to fostering a supportive, inclusive, and forward-thinking workplace where our team members can thrive. Our benefits are designed to support your well-being, professional growth, and ability to work at a sustainable pace.
  • Competitive compensation: $130,000 - 150,000 / year (commensurate with experience)
  • Comprehensive benefits, including medical, dental, and vision coverage
  • Flexible time off
  • Professional development opportunities
  • Company perks such as flex spending, wellness initiatives, etc.
  • 401(K) matching

About Our Culture

Navaide honors integrity, curiosity, diligence, and collaboration in everything we do. We believe in building strong relationships with our clients, communities, and teammates, united by a shared purpose of creating a stronger tomorrow.

Ready to Make a Difference?

For more about us, please check out the following links:
  • About Navaide
  • Other Opportunities
  • Employee Benefits
  • Connect with us on LinkedIn!

No third parties, please.

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