Technical Solutions Engineer

About the Opportunity

Reporting to the Director, Product, the Technical Solutions Engineer owns the full technical arc of onboarding and implementing our platform for new higher education institutions, from the first discovery call through go-live. You'll run discovery to understand each institution's data landscape, design how their systems connect to ours, and personally write and ship the code and configuration that makes that connection work. You’ll be the first technical point of contact for our customers whenever they need help, helping to ensure the platform works for each institution's specific data environment. Over time you'll also turn what you learn from each engagement into reference architectures and playbooks, so every new institution onboards faster than the last.

Core Responsibilities

Implementation and Delivery

• Directly build and ship the technical work each institution's onboarding requires – writing and modifying code, pipelines, and configuration to connect their systems to ours.
• Configure, validate, and troubleshoot data mappings, schema alignment, and data flows specific to each institution's environment.
• Anticipate integration risks and unblock issues independently before they stall a deployment.
• Build reusable technical assets: reference architectures, integration playbooks, mapping templates so that each institution onboards faster than the last.

Technical Partner Engagement

• Serve as the primary technical point of contact for higher education institutions participating in the UDTS, partnering closely with the account/success manager on each relationship
• Lead technical discovery: understand each institution's data landscape and translate it into integration and governance requirements and a recommended solution design, while being aware of the internal technical and product roadmap and constraints
• Run solution design and architecture conversations with institutional IT, data, and IR teams, scoping integrations, defining data flows, and setting realistic technical expectations
• Produce integration specs, and technical implementation plans tailored to each institution's environment, governance needs, and constraints
• Translate our platform's capabilities and roadmap accurately back to institutions, and translate institutional technical feedback into clear requirements for internal Technology and Product teams.

Cross-Functional Alignment

• Partner with Engineering and Product to confirm proposed integration solutions are feasible and align with platform direction.
• Surface recurring technical patterns and gaps across institutions to inform product priorities.
• Maintain a clear, shared view of each engagement's technical status, open issues, and dependencies.

What Success Looks Like in your first 90 days

• Ramp up on platform architecture, data model, and integration patterns.
• Take ownership of the technical relationship for at least one lighthouse institution and complete a technical discovery of its data landscape.
• Deliver a first end-to-end data mapping/integration for that institution.
• Begin building reusable assets from current engagements.
• Establish a working cadence with Product and Engineering, including a documented, shared view of engagement status.

Qualifications

Required

• Deep alignment with DataKind's mission and values, and demonstrated commitment to educational equity and data-driven social impact
• 5+ years in hands-on technical implementation, or solutions architecture, including direct client- or partner-facing delivery.
• Must have personally written and shipped production code, data pipelines, and system integrations, not just directed others.
• Able to independently configure and troubleshoot data mappings, schema alignment, and data flows; proficient in SQL and a scripting language, Python preferred.
• Comfortable running technical discovery directly with institutional IT/data teams and unblocking issues without routing to Engineering.

Preferred

• Experience in higher education, either as a client-side technical stakeholder or at a data integration vendor serving higher ed
• Understanding of data privacy, security, and accessibility requirements in education contexts.
• Background as a software engineer, data scientist, or similar technical role.