Protect our Land, Ascend with Us!

Ascension is seeking an experienced Data Engineer / ETL Specialist to support the U.S. Coast Guard’s Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber and Intelligence—or C5I—business-performance and data-integration mission.

This is not primarily a reporting or dashboard-development position. We are seeking a hands-on technical professional who can take data originating from multiple systems, owners, formats, and levels of quality and turn those inputs into reliable, governed, analytics-ready datasets.

The ideal candidate understands that effective analytics begins well before a dashboard is created. They should be comfortable investigating unfamiliar datasets, identifying quality issues, developing repeatable ETL processes, reconciling conflicting data, documenting transformations, working with data owners to resolve discrepancies, and establishing trusted data products that can support executive decision-making, automated visualization, and AI-assisted analysis.

The successful candidate will be technically strong in SQL, Python, ETL/data-pipeline development, data validation, and modern data architectures, while also being comfortable working directly with Government business stakeholders, analysts, developers, and system owners.

Experience with Databricks, Lakehouse architectures, Unity Catalog, and Qlik will be particularly valuable because these technologies are specifically identified in the Coast Guard requirement.

The role addresses one of the more technically demanding elements of the USCG requirement. Ascension has demonstrated adjacent experience integrating, cleaning, validating, analyzing, and visualizing disparate datasets—including current ETL work using Power Query and SharePoint data-staging environments—but this position expands that capability into the Coast Guard’s Databricks/Qlik Integrated Data Environment.

Summary of the Contractor Role

The Data Engineer / ETL Specialist will provide full-time data integration and engineering support within an Agile development environment supporting the Coast Guard’s C5I Mission Performance organization.

The specialist will design, build, execute, troubleshoot, and improve Extract-Transform-Load processes that ingest data from numerous and disparate organizational sources. The individual will work with data owners and technical stakeholders to understand source-system structures, assess data quality, establish transformation and validation rules, reconcile inconsistencies, and prepare trusted data for operational performance management.

The position will help create the underlying data foundation necessary for the Coast Guard to monitor organizational processes, services, products, and business outcomes.

A major focus will be enabling the Government’s objective of deploying automated data visualizations and AI-assisted analytics using Databricks and Qlik within the Coast Guard Integrated Data Environment.

The specialist will participate as part of an integrated Government/contractor Agile team. The PWS specifically requires contractor personnel to participate in Sprint Planning, Backlog Reviews, Sprint Reviews, and Sprint Retrospectives and to complete assigned User Stories, story points, and Product Increments during development cycles.

This individual should therefore bring both strong engineering discipline and an Agile delivery mindset.

What You Will Help the Coast Guard Solve

The successful candidate will help address challenges such as:

• Disparate information residing across multiple systems, organizations, spreadsheets, databases, and repositories.
• Inconsistent field definitions, metadata, formats, and data-quality standards.
• Manual consolidation and reconciliation activities that slow business-performance reporting.
• Data that cannot yet be reliably reused across dashboards, analytics, and AI-assisted analysis.
• Limited traceability between original source data, transformation logic, and downstream analytical outputs.
• Difficulty establishing reusable and scalable enterprise datasets.
• Requirements for trusted, auditable, repeatable, and governed analytical data.
• The need to move from manually assembled performance information toward automated analytical capabilities.

Day-to-Day / Recurring Activities

The Data Engineer / ETL Specialist will:

• DESIGN scalable ETL/ELT processes for ingesting, transforming, integrating, and publishing structured and semi-structured data.
• EXTRACT data from multiple Coast Guard and approved external data sources using SQL, APIs, flat files, spreadsheets, databases, and other approved interfaces.
• PROFILE incoming datasets to identify completeness issues, duplicates, null values, format inconsistencies, anomalous values, and structural differences.
• TRANSFORM raw information into standardized, reusable, analytics-ready datasets using SQL, Python, Databricks, and other Government-approved tools.
• CONSOLIDATE data from numerous and disparate organizational sources into consistent analytical structures.
• VALIDATE source and transformed data using automated and manual data-quality controls.
• RECONCILE inconsistent records, definitions, calculations, and business rules in coordination with Government data owners and subject-matter experts.
• DEVELOP repeatable data pipelines supporting performance measurement, operational analysis, dashboards, and AI-assisted analytics.
• BUILD reusable data models, transformation routines, queries, scripts, and supporting technical components.
• SUPPORT implementation of Databricks Lakehouse capabilities and data-processing workloads within the Coast Guard Integrated Data Environment.
• UTILIZE Unity Catalog or applicable Government data-governance mechanisms to support metadata management, data discovery, lineage, access controls, and trusted data assets.
• PREPARE datasets and semantic structures for use by Qlik and other approved analytical or visualization platforms.
• COLLABORATE with business analysts, data analysts, Government developers, product owners, data owners, and C5I stakeholders to translate information needs into technical data requirements.
• DOCUMENT source-to-target mappings, transformation rules, data dictionaries, metadata, interfaces, assumptions, validation procedures, and data-quality controls.
• AUTOMATE recurring ingestion, transformation, validation, and publishing activities wherever technically feasible.
• OPTIMIZE data pipelines and queries for reliability, scalability, performance, maintainability, and reuse.
• TROUBLESHOOT pipeline failures, malformed source data, query problems, access problems, and other data-integration issues.
• MONITOR data-processing activities and proactively identify conditions that could affect delivery schedules or downstream analytical products.
• IMPLEMENT appropriate quality-control checks before publishing data for operational or executive use.
• PROTECT Controlled Unclassified Information, Privacy Act information, proprietary information, and other sensitive Government information in accordance with applicable DHS and Coast Guard requirements.
• APPLY required security practices associated with DHS 4300A and applicable NIST standards when handling Government information.
• PARTICIPATE in Agile Sprint Planning, Backlog Reviews, Sprint Reviews, Sprint Retrospectives, and other development-team ceremonies.
• ESTIMATE assigned User Stories and technical tasks and communicate dependencies, blockers, assumptions, and delivery risks.
• DELIVER assigned Product Increments within agreed Sprint schedules.
• DEMONSTRATE completed data capabilities during Sprint Reviews and incorporate Government feedback into subsequent iterations.
• SUPPORT development of technical documentation, status information, performance metrics, and monthly reporting required under the task order.
• MAINTAIN appropriate version control, naming conventions, documentation, and traceability for technical work products.
• RESPOND rapidly to technical issues while operating with appropriate independence in an environment where requirements may evolve as source systems, priorities, and Government needs change.