Palantir Data Engineer

This onsite Palantir Data Engineer role at Guidehouse in McLean, VA focuses on designing and operating ontology-driven data products in Palantir Foundry, with an emphasis on semantic data modeling, governance, and analytics to support case management and operational workflows.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and maintain Palantir Foundry Ontologies, including entities, relationships, properties, actions, and permissions.
• Translate business processes and domain requirements into clear, reusable entity and relationship models.
• Ensure semantic consistency across datasets by enforcing standardized definitions, naming conventions, and relationship patterns.
• Evolve ontologies over time while maintaining lineage, backward compatibility, and data contracts.
• Design and implement ingestion pipelines into Foundry from APIs, relational databases, object storage, file drops, and external partners.
• Build transformation logic that materializes ontological entities and relationships from raw and curated data sources.
• Implement incremental processing and CDC patterns to keep ontology-backed data current.
• Optimize pipeline performance and reliability while maintaining clarity between raw, curated, and ontology-backed layers.
• Produce analysis-ready datasets that power 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 and analytical or machine learning consumption from the same semantic foundation.
• Ensure datasets and entities are fully documented with ownership, descriptions, and business definitions.
• Maintain end-to-end lineage from source systems through transformations into ontological entities.
• Implement policy-based access controls and secure handling aligned to organizational and 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, conduct root-cause analysis, and implement preventive improvements.
• Support environment promotion practices (DEV, TEST, PRE-PROD, PROD) with repeatable and auditable processes.
• Partner 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

• A Bachelor's degree is required
• A minimum of 3 years of experience building and operating production data pipelines and data models is required
• Hands-on experience with Palantir Foundry, or strong data engineering experience 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 proficiency in SQL and 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
• Palantir AIP
• Databricks
• Spark
• Lakehouse architectures

Benefits

• Medical, Rx, Dental & Vision Insurance
• Personal and Family Sick Time & Company Paid Holidays
• Position may be eligible for a discretionary variable incentive bonus
• Parental Leave and Adoption Assistance
• 401(k) Retirement Plan
• Basic Life & Supplemental Life
• Health Savings Account, Dental/Vision & Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts
• Short-Term & Long-Term Disability
• Student Loan PayDown
• Tuition Reimbursement, Personal Development & Learning Opportunities
• Skills Development & Certifications
• Employee Referral Program
• Corporate Sponsored Events & Community Outreach
• Emergency Back-Up Childcare Program
• Mobility Stipend

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 a related field (or equivalent practical experience)
• Palantir AIP experience, including ontology-backed document understanding and summarization
• Palantir AIP experience, including entity extraction and enrichment
• Palantir AIP experience, including human-in-the-loop review with governance controls
• Using AI copilots for pipeline development, transformations, ontology evolution, and code review
• Applying generative AI to improve 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