Data Platform Engineer Jobs in Chicago, IL

What You’ll Do

Platform Unification & Integration

• Audit existing analytics applications to understand their underlying technology choices, data flows, and integration points

• Design and implement integration patterns (APIs, event streams, shared data contracts) that allow siloed applications to interoperate without unnecessary rewrites

• Evaluate build vs. consolidate vs. federate tradeoffs for components across the platform, documenting your rationale and driving alignment

• Build and maintain shared platform services — authentication, observability, configuration management, logging — that reduce duplication across applications

Data Pipeline & ETL Engineering

• Develop a deep understanding of existing data pipelines owned by distributed teams — including their data sources, transformation logic, and dependencies

• Design and build a unified presentation layer that surfaces data from heterogeneous compute environments — including large-scale distributed systems (e.g., Spark) and traditional relational databases — in a consistent, accessible way

• Partner with domain teams who have the deepest knowledge of their own data — acting as an integration architect and collaborator rather than a centralized pipeline owner; identify unification opportunities but defer to domain expertise on data semantics and processing logic

Cloud Infrastructure

• Deploy and manage platform services on cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred; Azure/GCP experience a plus)

• Contribute to infrastructure-as-code practices using tools such as Terraform, CDK, or Pulumi

• Collaborate with DevOps/SRE to define deployment pipelines and reliability standards for integration services

• Construct evidence-based business cases for cloud feature adoption — translating technical requirements into business value, risk reduction, and compliance language that resonates with IT governance and procurement stakeholders

What We’re Looking For

Required Qualifications

• 3+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 1 years focused on integration, platform, or infrastructure work

• Proficiency in at least one backend language commonly used in data-intensive systems (Python, Go, Java, or similar); proficiency in two or more languages strongly preferred

• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS strongly preferred) including compute, storage, networking, and managed services

• Experience building and operating data pipelines (ETL/ELT), including schema management and data quality monitoring

• Working experience with AI-assisted development tooling in a professional engineering context

• Strong written communication skills — able to produce clear architecture decision records (ADRs), runbooks, and design documents

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience evaluating and rationalizing heterogeneous technology stacks — i.e., inheriting systems you didn’t design and making them work together

• Familiarity with analytics or ML platform tooling (e.g., Airflow, dbt, MLflow, Spark, or SaaS equivalents)

• Experience with API gateway management, service mesh, or distributed tracing tooling

• Background working with both structured (SQL) and semi-structured (JSON, Parquet, Avro) data at scale

How You Work

We care as much about how you think as what you’ve built. The ideal candidate for this role:

• Is pragmatic over dogmatic — you reach for the right solution given real constraints, not the theoretically perfect one

• Communicates tradeoffs clearly to both technical peers and non-technical stakeholders

• Is comfortable making a recommendation and defending it, but genuinely updates when presented with better information

• Brings structure to ambiguous problems — you can walk into a complex legacy system and produce a clear map of what’s there

• Understands that “don’t touch what works” and “build it right” are often both correct answers, depending on context

• Takes ownership of quality and reliability — you care about what happens after you ship

What We Offer

• Competitive base salary commensurate with experience

• Flexible remote-first or hybrid work environment

• Opportunity to define integration and platform patterns that will shape the organization’s technical direction

The estimated base salary for this job is $100,000 - $130,000 USD. The range represents a good faith estimate of the range that Huron reasonably expects to pay for this job at the time of the job posting. The actual salary paid to an individual will vary based on multiple factors, including but not limited to specific skills or certifications, years of experience, market changes, and required travel. This job is also eligible to participate in Huron’s annual incentive compensation program, which reflects Huron’s pay for performance philosophy. Inclusive of annual incentive compensation opportunity, the total estimated compensation range for this job is $112,000 - $153,400 USD. The job is also eligible to participate in Huron’s benefit plans which include medical, dental and vision coverage and other wellness programs. The salary range information provided is in accordance with applicable state and local laws regarding salary transparency that are currently in effect and may be implemented in the future.

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