What are the responsibilities and job description for the Principal Data Engineer position at Basil Systems?
Principal Data Engineer
Location: Boston, MA (Hybrid, 3 days /week at our office in Back Bay)
We’re hiring a stellar Data Engineer to join our engineering org at Basil Systems.
About Basil Systems
Basil Systems is a fast-growing startup named #2 in Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies of 2026 for the Data Science category! Join us and help us revolutionize healthcare data access and insights for the life sciences industry. We've built powerful platforms that help pharmaceutical and medical device companies navigate complex regulatory landscapes, accelerate product development, improve patient safety, and ultimately bring life-saving innovations to market faster. Our SaaS platforms transform disconnected data sources into actionable intelligence, empowering organizations to make data-driven decisions that improve patient outcomes and save lives.
The Role
We are seeking a Principal Data Engineer to own and advance the data infrastructure that powers our healthcare insights platform. As our engineering team scales and we expand our data capabilities, we need someone who can build reliable, scalable pipelines while ensuring data quality across increasingly complex regulatory sources.
Key Responsibilities
- Design, build, and maintain robust ETL processes for healthcare regulatory data
- Integrate new data sources as we onboard customers and expand platform capabilities
- Optimize pipeline performance and reliability
- Ensure data accuracy and consistency across complex transformation workflows
Qualifications
- 5 years of professional experience as a data engineer or in a similar role
- Experience with data modeling, schema design, and building scalable data pipelines across relational databases, document stores (MongoDB), and search engines (Elasticsearch)
- Experience with Apache Airflow and data pipeline orchestration
- Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools such as Docker, Terraform, Terragrunt, Helm, and Kubernetes manifests
- Experience with Apache Spark and distributed computing
- Knowledge of or willingness to learn and work with Generative AI technologies
- Experience with developing for distributed cloud platforms
- Strong commitment to engineering best practices
Nice-to-Haves
- Experience with Snowflake
- Solid understanding of modern security practices, especially in healthcare data contexts
- Subject matter expertise in Life Sciences / Pharma / MedTech
This role might not be for you if...
- You're a heavy process advocate and want enterprise-grade Scrum or rigid methodologies
- You have a need for perfect clarity before taking action
- You have a big company mindset
What We Offer
- Competitive salary
- Health and vision benefits
- Attractive equity package
- Flexible work environment (hybrid-friendly)
- Opportunity to work on impactful projects that are helping bring life-saving medical products to market
- Be part of a mission-driven team solving real healthcare challenges at a critical scaling point
Our Culture
At Basil Systems, we value flexibility and support a distributed team. We are committed to building a diverse, inclusive, and safe work environment for everyone. Our team is passionate about using technology to make a meaningful difference in healthcare. Basil Systems is an equal opportunity employer.