Lead Palantir Engineer

Lead Palantir Engineer - Ontology, Workshop, PySpark Location: Remote Contract: 6-months initial contract Rate: $150 - $165 per hour We’re seeking a Lead Palantir Engineer who owns ontology and pipeline design decisions within an assigned Scrum team. You’ll partner closely with the Unified Data Layer (UDL) Architecture function to resolve cross-cutting design questions, ensuring our ontology, pipelines, and data products align with enterprise standards while still meeting product-team delivery needs. The ideal candidate is strong across the full stack, comfortable bridging data modeling, pipeline engineering, and application/service integration, and able to drive technical decisions that balance scale, sustainment, and delivery velocity. Key Responsibilities • Own ontology and pipeline design decisions within your assigned Scrum team, ensuring consistency, correctness, and long-term maintainability • Design, build, and maintain Foundry pipelines using Pipeline Builder and the Code Repository, with appropriate selection based on: • scale and performance requirements • sustainment and operational need • steam conventions and maintainability tradeoffs • Use Foundry Solution Designer to communicate end-to-end solution design in support of Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) reviews and governance checkpoints • Partner with Unified Data Layer (UDL) Architecture on cross-cutting design questions, including ontology alignment, shared abstractions, integration patterns, and standards • Drive best practices for engineering quality and full-stack implementation, including: • clear interfaces between pipeline components and downstream consumers • pragmatic handling of data contracts and schema evolution • observability, testing strategies, and operational readiness • Provide technical leadership across sprint planning and delivery by: • recommending architectures and patterns • resolving design risks early • mentoring teammates on Foundry engineering approaches and conventions Required Qualifications • Strong hands-on experience with Palantir Foundry engineering, including: • ontology ownership and data modeling practices • pipeline development and maintainability considerations • using Pipeline Builder and Code Repository appropriately • using Foundry Solution Designer for end-to-end design communication • Demonstrated ability to own technical decisions within an Agile/Scrum environment • Proven experience partnering with enterprise architecture functions (e.g., UDL) to resolve cross-cutting issues and ensure alignment • Full-stack strength: comfortable working across the engineering surface area required to ship and operate data-enabled software systems (e.g., integration boundaries, system interfaces, and production concerns) Preferred Qualifications • Experience scaling ontology and pipeline approaches across multiple product areas/teams • Familiarity with SDLC governance patterns, review processes, and technical documentation standards • Experience defining or evolving engineering conventions (templates, patterns, reference implementations) for other teams to follow • Background in data engineering and software engineering best practices (testing, CI/CD concepts, reliability/observability patterns) .