Principal Data Governance Engineer

About Northrop Grumman

At Northrop Grumman, our employees have incredible opportunities to work on revolutionary systems that impact people's lives around the world today, and for generations to come. Our pioneering and inventive spirit has enabled us to be at the forefront of many technological advancements in our nation's history - from the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean, to stealth bombers, to landing on the moon. We look for people who have bold new ideas, courage and a pioneering spirit to join forces to invent the future, and have fun along the way. Our culture thrives on intellectual curiosity, cognitive diversity and bringing your whole self to work — and we have an insatiable drive to do what others think is impossible. Our employees are not only part of history, they're making history.

Job Overview

Northrop Grumman is seeking an experienced Principal Data Governance Engineer to join our Insights & Intelligence team within the Chief Information and Digital Office. Insights and Intelligence leads the integrated analytics, AI, data and intelligence strategy for the company and our mission is to reimagine decision making by bridging the gaps between organizations and connecting our business strategy to the right insights, analytics, and data.

Role and Responsibilities

As a Data Governance Engineer, you will report to the Director of Data Governance & Strategy. You will play a key role in designing, implementing and operationalizing data governance capabilities that ensure data is trusted, secure, compliant and fit for business use for the company with a focus on our enterprise data ecosystem. This role bridges data governance policy and data engineering by embedding governance controls, metadata management, data quality, and workflows directly into data platforms and pipelines. The ideal candidate has strong engineering skills combined with a deep understanding of data governance concepts and enterprise data ecosystems.

The primary location for this position is in Falls Church, VA; alternative work locations/arrangements will be considered as well, including working 100% virtual/remote.

Key Responsibilities Include:

• Design and implement technical frameworks for enterprise data governance, including metadata management, data lineage, data quality, and data classification.
• Support the implementation and management of a common data model.
• Collaborate with data engineering and platform teams to integrate governance controls into data ingestion, transformation, and consumption pipelines.
• Collaborate with data engineering to deploy automated data quality checks, monitoring, and issue remediation processes.
• Support data ownership and stewardship models by providing tooling and technical enablement.
• Collaborate with data architects, data engineers, security, privacy, and business stakeholders to ensure governance requirements are embedded into platform designs.
• Support regulatory, compliance, privacy, and risk requirements (e.g., PII identification, retention, access controls).
• Define and enforce standards for data modeling, naming conventions, and metadata capture.
• Evaluate and onboard data governance, metadata, and quality tools as needed.
• Produce technical documentation, reference architecture, and implementation guidelines.

Basic Qualifications

• Minimum Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related field with 5 years of relevant experience, or a Master’s degree with 3 years of relevant experience.
• Hands-on experience implementing data governance capabilities within modern data platforms such as Databricks, through Unity Catalog.
• Strong SQL and Python skills and experience with cloud data platforms such as Databricks.
• Familiarity with data governance concepts including data ownership, stewardship, lineage, metadata, and data quality.
• Experience integrating governance with CI/CD and DevOps practices.

Preferred Qualifications

• Knowledge of privacy and regulatory requirements (e.g., GDPR, CCPA, ITAR, SOX).
• Experience with ontology-based or semantic data modeling approaches.
• Background in large-scale deployment of data Lakehouse such as Databricks.
• Good understanding of large enterprise systems such as Workday, SAP, Salesforce and ServiceNow.
• Strong stakeholder engagement and communication skills.

Compensation and Benefits

Primary Level Salary Range: $103,600.00 - $171,000.00. This range is a guideline; actual salary depends on experience, education, skills, and market conditions. Employees may be eligible for overtime, shift differential, and discretionary bonuses. Northrop Grumman provides health insurance, life and disability insurance, a savings plan, Company paid holidays, and paid time off (PTO).

Key skills/competency

• Data Governance
• Data Engineering
• Metadata Management
• Data Quality
• SQL
• Python
• Databricks
• Cloud Data Platforms
• CI/CD
• DevOps