Protect our Land, Ascend with Us!

ASCENSION is seeking an experienced Data Engineering & Database Specialist to support the U.S. Department of Education Office of Postsecondary Education in strengthening how enterprise data is structured, governed, maintained, accessed, and used for decision-making.

The ideal candidate is a technically strong database professional who can translate business and data-governance requirements into a practical relational data architecture. This individual will help design and maintain the OPE Data Governance Database, integrate information from multiple education and program data sources, establish relationships among data assets and related entities, build repeatable data ingestion and update processes, and develop mechanisms that allow authorized OPE personnel to query, maintain, validate, and report on governance information.

This is a strong fit for a candidate who combines relational database design, data engineering, data integration, data architecture, data quality, and data governance capabilities with an ability to communicate effectively with business users who may not have database expertise.

The successful candidate should be analytical, highly organized, security-conscious, and comfortable taking ownership of technical problems with limited day-to-day supervision. The role requires someone who can identify weaknesses in existing data structures, recommend practical solutions, develop repeatable processes, document technical decisions, and build database capabilities that can remain sustainable after implementation.

The Government’s objective is not simply to create another database. OPE is seeking a governance capability that improves the visibility, interoperability, accessibility, quality, and management of its data assets across organizational boundaries.

Position Summary

The Data Engineering & Database Specialist will design, develop, configure, populate, test, document, and maintain relational database structures supporting OPE’s data governance and data management lifecycle.

A central responsibility will be supporting development of the OPE Data Governance Database, which is expected to maintain separate but relationally connected inventories of:

• OPE data assets
• Information Collection Requests
• IT systems
• OPE personnel with data-management responsibilities
• OPE organizational units
• Data governance requirements

The specialist will establish primary and subordinate tables, define keys and relationships, support data ingestion and migration, develop user-friendly forms and interfaces, configure queries and reports, establish data validation and quality controls, and develop backup or recovery mechanisms that allow data to be restored when records are changed incorrectly. The PWS specifically anticipates front-end tools that allow personnel without database expertise to enter, update, query, report on, and extract information.

The position will also support broader data integration, governance, reporting, automation, and analytic requirements across the DAES effort. The specialist must therefore understand that database development occurs within a federal data environment governed by information quality, records management, privacy, accessibility, and information-security requirements.

Day-to-Day and Recurring Responsibilities

• Design relational database architectures that translate OPE business and data-governance requirements into normalized, maintainable data structures.
• Develop database tables, schemas, primary and foreign keys, reference tables, lookup structures, and relationships supporting inventories of data assets, information collections, IT systems, personnel, organizational units, and governance requirements.
• Map relationships among OPE data assets and related entities to improve traceability, governance oversight, and compliance monitoring.
• Build front-end forms and data-entry mechanisms that allow authorized OPE personnel without specialized database expertise to create, review, update, and maintain records.
• Develop data ingestion and transformation processes for importing structured information from multiple education, program, administrative, and governance data sources.
• Integrate disparate data sources while maintaining consistent definitions, formats, identifiers, metadata, and business rules.
• Create queries, reports, extracts, and reusable reporting structures that enable the Data Governance Board and OPE personnel to review and analyze information contained within the database.
• Establish database backup, restoration, rollback, and recovery processes that protect against erroneous record updates or data loss.
• Implement data validation rules, referential-integrity controls, quality checks, duplicate detection, and exception-handling procedures.
• Evaluate source data for completeness, consistency, timeliness, validity, accuracy, and fitness for intended use.
• Automate repeatable data collection, ingestion, transformation, reconciliation, quality-control, and reporting workflows where technically and operationally appropriate.
• Document data models, schemas, source-to-target mappings, business rules, data dictionaries, metadata definitions, database procedures, interfaces, and configuration decisions.
• Develop database protocols and supporting structures that facilitate data-governance activities, including data quality planning, data strategy documentation, governance monitoring, and data project tracking.
• Collaborate with OPE Data Governance Board members, program personnel, analysts, project leadership, and technical stakeholders to define requirements and validate database functionality.
• Translate nontechnical business requirements into database specifications, logical models, physical models, queries, forms, and reporting functionality.
• Analyze existing data-management practices and recommend opportunities to improve data interoperability, accessibility, standardization, and lifecycle management.
• Perform database testing, data reconciliation, user-acceptance support, defect analysis, troubleshooting, and corrective actions.
• Monitor database performance, record quality, storage structures, interfaces, and data-processing workflows and recommend improvements.
• Protect sensitive information through appropriate access controls, encryption practices, handling procedures, and least-privilege principles.
• Maintain sufficient technical documentation and metadata to support understanding, use, maintenance, records management, and eventual transfer of Government information.
• Support preparation of technical analyses, database demonstrations, data-governance reports, briefings, and project status information.
• Participate in project meetings, technical working sessions, data-governance discussions, requirements workshops, and recurring status meetings as required.
• Coordinate database changes through controlled development, testing, validation, approval, and implementation processes.
• Comply with Department of Education requirements governing data quality, privacy, records management, accessibility, and information security.