Staff Data Engineer, Foundry & Ontology

LMI is seeking a Staff Data Engineer (on-site in Fort Bragg, NC) to build data architectures and ontology-driven capabilities for U.S. Army operational decision support. This role works with Palantir Foundry to connect authoritative data across Army and Department of Defense systems and to support AI-enabled features such as conversational AI and agent-enabled workflows, with direct, hands-on engineering involvement.

In this position, you will design and implement scalable pipelines, ontologies, and integrations that help turn mission requirements into reliable operational data products. You will also provide technical leadership in architecture, data modeling, and engineering practices while partnering closely with software engineers and operational stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop scalable data architectures, pipelines, and integrations using Palantir Foundry and related enterprise data platforms.
• Lead the development and refinement of ontologies representing operational entities, activities, and relationships across multiple data sources.
• Create and maintain data models connecting information about personnel, units, equipment, installations, resources, and operational activities.
• Evaluate existing data models and ontology implementations to identify opportunities for reuse, extension, and improvement.
• Integrate structured and unstructured data from Army and Department of Defense systems of record.
• Define approaches for data quality, validation, lineage, traceability, and access controls to support operational decision-making.
• Develop and maintain ontology objects, relationships, and associated workflows for operational applications and AI-enabled capabilities.
• Collaborate with software engineers to enable natural-language querying, conversational AI, and agent-enabled workflows grounded in authoritative enterprise data.
• Provide technical guidance on data architecture, integration patterns, and engineering best practices.
• Translate mission requirements into technical solutions in partnership with operational stakeholders.
• Support integration and interoperability across Palantir Foundry, Army Vantage, Maven, and related enterprise environments.
• Contribute hands-on to development, testing, troubleshooting, and deployment of production data capabilities.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, information systems, data science, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• 6+ years of experience in data engineering, data architecture, software engineering, or related technical disciplines.
• Strong proficiency in Python and SQL.
• Experience designing and implementing production data pipelines, transformations, and integrations.
• Experience with complex data modeling, including entity relationships across multiple data sources.
• Experience with Palantir Foundry, Army Vantage, Maven Smart System, or comparable enterprise data platforms.
• Experience integrating data from multiple enterprise systems, including APIs, databases, and structured or unstructured sources.
• Understanding of data quality, lineage, governance, security, and access controls.
• Ability to lead technical design efforts while contributing directly hands-on.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, including work with multidisciplinary technical teams.
• Active Top Secret (TS) security clearance.

Technologies

• Palantir Foundry, Army Vantage, Maven Smart System
• Python, SQL, PySpark
• Natural-language querying, Conversational AI, Agent-enabled workflows
• APIs, databases

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with Palantir Foundry Ontology, including object types, link types, properties, and Actions.
• Experience designing ontology-driven applications or semantic data models.
• Experience with PySpark, distributed data processing, or large-scale enterprise data integration.
• Familiarity with Army operational data, including mobilization, personnel, force readiness, logistics, installations, or sustainment.
• Experience developing data foundations for AI-enabled applications, including retrieval-augmented generation and agent orchestration.
• Experience integrating data across systems with different security classifications, access requirements, or governance constraints.
• Experience supporting Department of Defense operational environments.
• Experience mentoring engineers and providing technical guidance on data architecture and engineering practices.

Target salary range: $160,000 - $180,000 per year.

Location: Fort Bragg, NC (onsite) (US-NC-Fort Bragg).