Junior Data Engineer

Location Note: This a hybrid role for our Wakefield, MA office (In-office one day per week, plus additional in-person trainings and workshops as needed) 

The Purpose of Your Role:  The Junior Data Engineer is part of the development team responsible for building, maintaining, enhancing, and integrating Sentinel’s data pipelines, data services, and connected systems. In this role, you will learn and contribute across the data engineering lifecycle: understanding requirements, documenting technical approaches, preparing test plans, writing and reviewing code, validating data quality, troubleshooting pipeline issues, and supporting releases.

Working with guidance from experienced engineers, you will help turn data from APIs, databases, files, and other systems into secure, reliable, and well-documented datasets that support Sentinel’s applications, reporting, and business decisions. You will contribute to engineering decisions within a defined scope and grow your ownership of our data platforms and practices over time. You also will support our business teams with business intelligence insights.

What you'll bring to Sentinel:

• A commitment to building secure, maintainable, testable, and observable data systems.
• A growth mindset and willingness to learn from experienced engineers, analysts, and business partners.
• Foundational programming skills for data processing, automation, and integration work.
• Working knowledge of SQL, relational databases, and data transformation concepts.
• Familiarity with Python or another programming language used for scripting and data engineering.
• An understanding of how data quality, lineage, documentation, and governance contribute to trusted data.
• Curiosity about how AI can responsibly improve engineering productivity, testing, documentation, and data quality.

What you'll be responsible for:• Work with Business Analysts, Data Analysts, Software Engineers, and peers to understand requirements and deliver data solutions you are proud of.

• Build, maintain, and enhance batch data pipelines and ETL/ELT workflows under the guidance of senior engineers.
• Write SQL and scripts to extract, transform, validate, and load data from APIs, databases, files, and other sources.
• Help design and maintain well-defined datasets, tables, views, and data models for downstream applications, reporting, and analytics.
• Implement data quality checks, reconciliation steps, logging, and monitoring to help ensure data is accurate, complete, timely, and available.
• Troubleshoot pipeline and data issues, communicate blockers clearly, and escalate risks with useful diagnostic information.
• Help modernize legacy data processes and move them toward secure, automated, cloud-based solutions that follow our CI.
• Contribute to code reviews, automated tests, build pipelines, documentation, runbooks, and other practices that strengthen our development and data operations.
• Support safe releases, backfills, and reprocessing by validating results and documenting changes.

About you: We are looking for smart and innovative thinkers to drive our business and clients forward—someone with self-motivation, drive, determination, and the strength of character to challenge the status quo. We strive to surround ourselves with team members who are proud of their work and look for people who are willing to embrace change.

What you need to have: Preferred qualifications:• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Information Systems, Mathematics, or a related field—or equivalent experience.

• Academic, internship, project, or professional experience working with SQL, Python, databases, data analysis, or software development.
• Understanding of relational database concepts, data modeling fundamentals, and common ETL/ELT patterns.
• Experience or coursework using SQL to query, join, aggregate, and validate data.
• Familiarity with structured data formats and integrations, including CSV, JSON, and REST APIs.
• Foundational knowledge of AWS or another cloud platform, including storage, compute, and access-control concepts.
• Familiarity with version control, pull requests, automated testing, and build or deployment pipelines.
• Ability to work in a hybrid work environment, with one day in the office.
• Authorized to work in the US without current or future sponsorship.

Salary Range: $85,000-$93,000

At Sentinel, compensation is calibrated to your geographic location to reflect local market conditions; the posted salary range may vary based on where you live.

Nice to haves:• Experience with git, build pipelines, auth, frontend testing.

What you’ll be part of: Joining our company means becoming part of something special. We're driven by a mission to excel in our industry and within our team, supported by people who truly care about our organization.

Sentinel was recently recognized by The Boston Globe as a Top Place to Work in 2020 and 2023. In 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024, Sentinel earned a Top Workplace USA Award from Energage.

At Sentinel, we welcome people from diverse experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives – and we wouldn’t have it any other way. So even if you don’t meet every single requirement, please consider applying if you like what you see. Our priority is to find talented individuals who enrich our team culture, contribute with enthusiasm, and are passionate about what they do.

Sentinel is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes everyone to our team. If you need reasonable adjustments at any point in the application or interview process, please let us know.

Some of our Benefits: PTO (vacation, sick, personal time bank) FTO (Flexible time off for vacation, sick and personal time) after 2 years of service 12 Paid Holidays (10 stated and 2 floating holidays) 2 Community Volunteer Days 5 Summer Half Days Medical, Dental, Vision Life Insurance LTD & STD Retirement Plan with 4% Employer Match Parental LeaveSee What We Stand For: https://www.sentinelgroup.com/About-Us/Join-Our-Team

Who we are: Sentinel Group proudly serves nearly 5,000 clients throughout the U.S. For 35+ years, we’ve remained devoted to positively impacting the lives of our people, our clients and our communities. With a 9-year average associate tenure among our 265 professionals, our team’s commitment to excellent service has positioned Sentinel as the only provider who makes benefits EASY: easy for your people; easy for your business; and easy for you.

Our ultimate goal is to help companies and their employees prepare for their future health, wealth and retirement needs. Whether it’s through retirement plans, group health insurance, reimbursement accounts or financial planning, we engineer simple solutions and continuously strive to make them better. Our in-house experts – and their commitment to excellence – define who we are.

Sentinel is also one of the largest employee benefits firms in Massachusetts (Boston Business Journal) and was named a 2022 Retirement Plan Adviser of the Year in the Mentorship category (PLANADVISER Magazine).