Are you an experienced data engineer looking to use your skills to build meaningful technology and help the next generation of developers grow — while taking on more technical ownership and mentorship responsibility than most senior roles offer?
Code the Dream creates opportunity that changes lives, builds technology that benefits our communities, and expands access to the skills we need for a more innovative world.
What is the Senior Data Engineer Tech Equity Fellowship?
The Senior Data Engineer Tech Equity Fellowship is a unique, one-year opportunity for an experienced software engineer with a strong background in data engineering, cloud systems, and Python development. As a Fellow, you'd mentor and collaborate with a community of developers in training while building reliable data systems and useful technology for nonprofit, government, and community partners — and contributing to a more inclusive and equitable tech sector. In practice, nearly every Fellow has stayed on with CTD in a permanent role afterward. We can't guarantee it, since it depends on funding and what roles are open when the year ends, but that's our track record.
We are a growing nonprofit organization where people from underrepresented and low-income backgrounds learn to code. After months of intensive training with Code the Dream’s online curriculum and mentors, new coders have a chance to apply to join CTD Labs, where they gain invaluable real-world experience as full-time software development apprentices.
In our CTD Labs apprenticeship program, experienced engineers work alongside student apprentices to produce high-quality work for our partners that also offers real experience that will help the apprentices launch life-changing careers.
CTD Labs works with a wide range of companies, nonprofit and government agencies, and we are very proud of the broad range of projects that come through CTD Labs every year. Recent CTD Labs projects include:
- A benefits-navigation app that tells low-income North Carolina families, in six minutes, exactly which of 20+ benefits and tax credits they qualify for — and how much money that's worth — before they ever fill out a form.
- Vamos, a route-planning and visit-tracking app used by legal aid organizations and migrant health clinics to run farmworker outreach — cutting hours of paperwork so advocates spend more time in the field.
- An evidence-based educational platform that has been proven to help young children with learning differences improve their reading skills.
In this position, you would serve as a senior data engineer, technical lead, and mentor. You would help design and build data platforms and pipelines that turn complex, messy source data into reliable, well-structured information that can be safely used for analysis, applications, and other downstream systems. This may include building ETL pipelines, defining schemas and data quality rules, working with cloud infrastructure, designing data access and governance patterns, and helping teams make sound architectural decisions.
You would also help CTD Labs junior apprentice data engineers and developers keep learning, think through obstacles, and become better data engineers. Each day, you'll be checking in with student developers working on different projects.
Your main areas of focus will likely include:
- Technical leadership & mentoring: Overseeing all aspects of the development process (with help from the team!), including regular check-ins with junior developers, code reviews, technical planning, breaking complex data engineering work into apprentice-appropriate tasks, and helping developers learn strong engineering practices while making thoughtful use of AI coding tools. (~40%)
- Hands-on development and architecture: Designing, building, testing, and improving data pipelines, ETL processes, cloud infrastructure, databases, APIs, and related applications; whiteboarding solutions; troubleshooting difficult data problems; and making big-picture decisions about architecture and technology. (~40%)
- Contributing to our community: Participating in everything else that goes into our unique nonprofit community and software development shop, from meeting with current or potential CTD Labs partners, to providing input on CTD class curriculum updates, to joining CTD karaoke parties (definitely not required!). (~20%)
These percentages are estimates intended to give you a rough idea of the role, and there is room for flexibility depending on individual strengths and interests.
Most Code the Dream students follow one of two main paths: (1) full-stack JavaScript, primarily using React and Node.js, or (2) Python, through a web development or data engineering path. For this fellowship, we are particularly interested in someone with deep Python and data engineering experience who can help apprentices apply those skills to complex, production-quality systems.
Note on the Role
This role intentionally blends two things. Data engineering, cloud infrastructure, and reliable data systems form the primary technical focus, while software development and technical mentorship remain essential parts of the fellowship.
We are less concerned with whether someone has already used every AWS service in our stack than with whether they understand the underlying engineering problems and can learn new technologies quickly. A strong candidate might have extensive Python, SQL, ETL, and cloud experience without having previously worked with a particular service such as AWS Glue or DataZone.
The right candidate does not need to be equally specialized in every area. We are looking for someone who can make sound technical decisions, get their hands dirty solving difficult data problems, and help less experienced developers learn how to do the same.
What We’re Looking For
We’re looking for an experienced engineer who can lead complex technical work while helping developing engineers build their own skills and confidence.
You should bring:
- Approximately 5+ years of professional software engineering, data engineering, or related technical experience
- Strong experience with Python and SQL
- Experience building or working with data pipelines and data systems, including concepts such as ETL/ELT, data modeling, APIs, and data quality
- Experience building or operating systems in a cloud environment such as AWS, Azure, or GCP
- Strong technical problem-solving and architecture skills, including the ability to turn ambiguous problems into understandable, executable work
- Experience mentoring developers, reviewing code, communicating technical decisions, and working collaboratively across different levels of experience
The Technology You’ll Work With
The projects you lead will span data engineering, cloud infrastructure, applied AI, and full-stack development. You will not necessarily come in knowing every technology below, but you should be comfortable learning unfamiliar tools and applying experience from comparable systems.
Current and upcoming work may involve:
- Data engineering: Python, SQL, PySpark, ETL/ELT pipelines, schema management, data quality, and large or complex datasets
- AWS: S3, Lambda, Glue, Athena, IAM, Lake Formation, DataZone, SageMaker, and related cloud services
- Data integration and governance: entity resolution, probabilistic record matching, metadata catalogs, lineage, permissions, and sensitive-data handling
- Infrastructure and development: Terraform or AWS CDK, Git/GitHub, CI/CD, APIs, and relational databases
- Analytics and legacy systems: Power BI and, on some projects, reading or modernizing existing R or SAS workflows
- Applied AI: using modern AI tools to accelerate software and data-engineering work where appropriate
- Web Development: You may work on projects that combine data engineering with web development using React, Python and/or Node.js.
We do not expect applicants to have prior experience with every item on this list. Experience with comparable technologies and the ability to get up to speed quickly matter more than checking every box.
Most engineers who take this fellowship come for two reasons: they want to build technology that helps people who need it, and they want to do the mentoring that launches life-changing careers for others. We can't compete with private-sector industry pay, but we can offer meaningful work and a package designed to support you through the year.
Fellowship salary: $80,000 — a nonprofit salary, but with ample room to grow post fellowship. What comes with it:
- Medical, dental, and vision. CTD covers 100% of employee medical premiums and 50% for a spouse or domestic partner and children.
- Generous holiday and vacation benefits.
- A workplace culture people tend to stick around for.
- Experience in the nonprofit and social impact sector, valuable if you're considering a longer-term move toward public interest work.
- A one-year fellowship that has led to a permanent role for Fellows who wanted to stay.
Code the Dream is an equal-opportunity employer. If you're excited about this role and believe your background and experience make you a strong fit—even if you don't meet every qualification—we encourage you to apply. We'd love to hear from you!
Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States. We are unable to offer visa sponsorship at this time.
Location: Fully remote (U.S.-based). Headquarters in Durham, NC at American Underground (a Google Tech Hub).
Application Deadline: We will review applications on a rolling basis, so interested candidates are encouraged to apply early. Preference given to applications received by October 5, 2026. The position will remain open until filled.
Start Date: As soon as possible.
How to apply: Visit https://codethedream.org/job-opportunities/ to submit your cover letter and resume.