Job Description
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Team Overview
• We are seeking a highly skilled Cloud Data Engineer with strong expertise in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to join our Cloud Strategy team. The ideal candidate will have 5-8 years of experience designing, implementing, optimizing, and governing cloud-based data platforms and analytics workloads.
This role requires deep technical expertise in GCP Data Engineering services, cloud cost optimization, workload right-sizing, architecture design, resource tagging/governance, and FinOps practices. The candidate should be comfortable partnering with engineering, architecture, platform, and business teams to improve performance, scalability, reliability, and cloud cost efficiency.

This is a hybrid position and involves regular performance of job responsibilities virtually as well as in-person at an assigned TU office location for a minimum of two days a week.
Role Overview And Core Responsibilities
ata Platform Architecture & Engineering
Design, implement, and optimize enterprise-scale data platforms on GCP.
Build scalable batch and streaming data pipelines.
Architect data ingestion, transformation, storage, and consumption solutions.
Evaluate and recommend the most appropriate GCP services for specific use cases.
Define standards and best practices for cloud-native data engineering.
GCP Workload Optimization
Analyze existing cloud workloads and identify optimization opportunities.
Recommend right-sizing strategies for compute, storage, and networking resources.
Improve resource utilization across data engineering platforms.
Optimize cluster sizing, auto-scaling policies, job scheduling, and resource allocation.
Reduce operational costs without impacting performance or reliability.
FinOps & Cloud Cost Management
Perform detailed cloud cost analysis and chargeback/showback reporting.
Establish cloud cost governance frameworks and optimization programs.
Identify idle, underutilized, and overprovisioned resources.
Develop cloud cost dashboards and KPIs.
Track budget consumption and provide cost-saving recommendations.
Build forecasting models for cloud spending.
Governance & Resource Management
Define and enforce metadata, labeling, and tagging standards.
Ensure cloud resources are properly categorized for cost allocation and accountability.
Implement governance controls for cloud resource lifecycle management.
Collaborate with platform and security teams to ensure compliance with organizational policies.
Performance Optimization
Tune data pipelines for throughput, latency, and cost efficiency.
Optimize BigQuery queries and storage patterns.
Improve Spark workload performance through cluster tuning.
Optimize data partitioning, clustering, indexing, and caching strategies.
Establish SLIs/SLOs for data platforms and monitor operational efficiency.
Stakeholder Collaboration
Work closely with architects, engineering teams, finance teams, and business stakeholders.
Provide consulting and technical guidance on cloud adoption and optimization.
Present cost-benefit analysis and architecture recommendations to leadership teams.
Required Knowledge And Experiences
5-8 years of experience in Data Engineering, Cloud Engineering, or Cloud Architecture.
Minimum 3+ years of hands-on experience with Google Cloud Platform.
Strong experience designing cloud-native data platforms.
Experience implementing cloud cost optimization initiatives.
Experience with enterprise-scale data processing environments.
Required Technical Skills
Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Strong knowledge and hands-on experience with:
Data Engineering Services
BigQuery
Dataproc
Dataflow
Pub/Sub
Cloud Composer (Airflow)
Cloud Storage
BigLake
Data Fusion
Datastream
Cloud SQL
AlloyDB
Spanner
Looker / Looker Studio
Compute & Infrastructure
GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine)
Compute Engine
Cloud Run
Serverless technologies
Instance Groups
Managed Services
Monitoring & Operations
Cloud Monitoring
Cloud Logging
Cloud Trace
Cloud Profiler
Cloud Asset Inventory
Cost Optimization & FinOps Skills
Strong understanding of:
GCP pricing and billing models
Compute cost optimization
BigQuery cost controls and query optimization
Dataproc cluster sizing and lifecycle optimization
Storage class optimization
Committed Use Discounts (CUDs)
Sustained Use Discounts
Reservation planning
Cost allocation models
Chargeback and Showback mechanisms
Budgeting and forecasting
Cloud ROI analysis
Unit economics
Capacity planning
FinOps best practices
Governance & Tagging
Resource Labels and Tags
Cost Center Mapping
Environment Classification (Prod, Non-Prod, Dev, Test)
Data Classification
Ownership Attribution
Resource Lifecycle Governance
Automated policy enforcement
Data Engineering Skills
Apache Spark
PySpark
SQL
Advanced BigQuery optimization
Data Modeling
ETL/ELT design
Streaming architectures
Data Warehousing
Lakehouse architectures
Data Quality frameworks
Data Lineage
Metadata management
DevOps & Automation Skills
Terraform
Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
GitHub Actions / Azure DevOps / Jenkins
CI/CD pipelines
Python
Shell scripting
Kubernetes
Docker
Security & Compliance
IAM design and governance
Service Accounts
VPC and networking fundamentals
Data protection and encryption
Secrets management
Audit logging
Compliance and governance frameworks
Preferred Certifications
One or more of the following:
Google Professional Data Engineer
Google Professional Cloud Architect
Google Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer
FinOps Certified Practitioner
FinOps Certified Professional
Terraform Associate
Success Metrics
The successful candidate should be able to:
Reduce cloud spend through optimization initiatives.
Improve utilization of GCP data platform resources.
Establish tagging and governance standards.
Optimize BigQuery, Dataproc, Dataflow, and storage costs.
Improve performance of enterprise data pipelines.
Provide measurable savings through architecture and workload optimization.
Drive cloud adoption while maintaining cost efficiency and operational excellence.
TransUnion Overview:
At TransUnion, we encourage and are committed to creating a real, positive impact and shared sense of purpose within our Workforce for Good, which empowers our people to grow, innovate and contribute to a better future for our communities and customers. We strive to build an environment where our associates are in the driver’s seat of their professional development— while having access to help along the way. We recognize that success comes when our associates thrive both professionally and personally; that’s why we prioritize work/life flexibility and offer resources for our teams across the globe to collaborate and drive excellence.
Be a part of our Workforce for Good – you’ll work with great people, pioneering products and cutting-edge technology.
TransUnion Job Title
Sr Developer, Applications Development