Kettle Engineer

Description:

Job Title: Kettle Engineer

Location: Seattle, WA (Can be Remote)

Type: Contract

Role Overview

We’re seeking a Kettle Engineer to design, operate, and continuously improve our Pentaho Data Integration (PDI/Kettle) platform and data movement processes that underpin business‑critical workflows. You will own end‑to‑end lifecycle management—from environment build and configuration to orchestration, monitoring, and support—partnering closely with application teams, production operations, and data stakeholders. The ideal candidate combines strong hands‑on Kettle expertise with solid SQL, automation, and production support practices in a fast‑moving, highly collaborative environment.

Primary Responsibilities

• Platform ownership: Install, configure, harden, and upgrade Kettle/PDI components (e.g., Spoon) across dev/prod.
• Process engineering: Migrate, re-engineer, and optimize jobs and transformations for existing transformations.
• Reliability & support: Document all workflows including ownership and escalation protocols. Knowledge transfer with Automation and Application Support teams.
• Observability: Implement proactive monitoring, logging, and alerting for the Kettle platform including all dependent processes.
• Collaboration: Partner with application, data, and infrastructure teams to deliver improvements to existing designs

Required Qualifications

• Kettle/PDI expertise: Experience installing and configuring a Kettle instance (server and client tools, repositories, parameters, security, and upgrades).
• Kettle/PDI expertise: Experience creating, maintaining, and supporting Kettle processes (jobs/transformations, error handling, recovery, and performance tuning).
• 4 years hands‑on SQL (writing/diagnosing and optimizing queries).
• Strong communication skills for both technical and non‑technical audiences; effective at documenting and sharing knowledge.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience integrating Kettle with cloud platforms (AWS and/or Azure); familiarity with containers or Windows/Linux server administration.
• Exposure to monitoring/observability stacks (e.g., DataDog, CloudWatch, or similar).
• Scripting/automation for operations (Python, PowerShell, or Bash); experience with REST APIs within Kettle.
• Background in financial services or other regulated/mission‑critical environments.

Key Outcomes (First 90 Days)

• Stand up or validate a hardened Kettle environment with baseline monitoring and runbooks.
• Migrate at least two high‑value Kettle workflows using shared templates and standardized error handling.