Data Engineer at Pittsburgh Penguins

About the Role

We’re a small, high-impact R\&D group embedded within a professional hockey organization. Our work directly supports coaches, scouts, and front-office decision makers by turning raw data into tools, models, and insights they can actually use. We build the infrastructure, pipelines, and applications that power better decisions—on and off the ice.

We’re looking for a Data Engineer who wants to own meaningful problems end to end, not just write tickets and wait for direction. This is a small team where everyone wears multiple hats, takes initiative, and ships real work. If you like autonomy, creative problem-solving, and hockey, you’ll fit right in.

What You’ll Do* Design, build, and maintain data pipelines and ETL/ELT workflows using Airflow and dbt to deliver clean, reliable data to analysts and applications.

* Architect and optimize our data warehouse in BigQuery, ensuring data models are performant, well-documented, and built for scale.

* Manage and improve Elasticsearch deployments for search, logging, and analytics use cases.

* Operate within GCP as the primary cloud environment—provisioning infrastructure, managing services, and keeping things running smoothly.

* Collaborate directly with analysts and decision makers to understand what they need and translate that into technical solutions.

* Explore and prototype agentic AI workflows—building intelligent, LLM-driven tools that can automate research, surface insights, or assist in decision support.

* Own projects from ideation through deployment. No hand-offs to a separate team—you see it through.

Required Qualifications* 2–4 years of professional experience in data engineering or a closely related role.

* Strong hands-on experience with BigQuery (or comparable cloud data warehouse) and SQL.

* Proficiency with dbt for data transformation and modeling.

* Experience building and managing workflows in Apache Airflow.

* Working knowledge of Elasticsearch for search, indexing, or observability use cases.

* Solid experience within Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Equivalent experience in AWS or Azure is acceptable, but GCP is our primary environment.

* Proficiency in Python and/or another language commonly used in data engineering.

* Comfort working in a Linux/CLI environment and with version control (Git).

Preferred Qualifications* Demonstrated interest in or experience with agentic AI development—building autonomous or semi-autonomous LLM-based tools, agents, or workflows.

* Familiarity with LLM APIs, prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), or agent frameworks.

* Interest in or passion for hockey. Understanding the sport, its data, and its culture will make you far more effective and engaged in this role.

* Experience working in a startup-like or small-team environment where resourcefulness matters more than process.

Who You Are* A self-starter. You don’t wait for someone to tell you what to do. You identify problems, propose solutions, and move. When something’s broken or missing, you fix it or build it.

* An owner. You take full responsibility for your work—from scoping a problem through deploying a solution and keeping it running. You don’t punt ambiguity to someone else.

* Creative and resourceful. We’re a small group doing a lot with limited resources. You find scrappy, effective solutions rather than waiting for perfect conditions.

* Direct and low-ego. You communicate clearly, give and receive honest feedback, and care more about getting the right answer than being right.

* Curious about hockey. You don’t need to be an expert, but genuine interest in the sport and how data can improve it will go a long way on this team.

What We Offer* The chance to directly influence how a professional hockey team makes decisions.

* A small, tight-knit team where your work is visible and valued from day one.

* Autonomy and ownership—real problems, real impact, minimal bureaucracy.

* Exposure to cutting-edge work in agentic AI applied to sports analytics.

* A team culture that values initiative, creativity, and getting things done.

*We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, gender identity, marital or veteran status, or any other protected class.*