AB INITIO DEVELOPER JOB DESCRIPTION

Ab Initio Developer means something specific: someone who can take a raw business requirement and turn it into a tested, deployed data pipeline that other systems depend on. Few technical roles carry as much ownership over data movement at scale, from source extraction through transformation logic to warehouse load, with no generalist buffer between the developer and production consequences. This is demanding, hands-on work. The role typically sits within a data engineering or enterprise technology group, supporting stakeholders ranging from business analysts gathering MI requirements to architecture teams enforcing standards across distributed platforms.

As the Ab Initio Developer, you own the design, development, and production delivery of ETL pipelines and data warehouse components that keep enterprise reporting and analytics running reliably. You work within a cross-functional technology team, coordinating with onshore and offshore developers, QA groups, and solution architects to meet acceptance criteria and performance targets.

Career Impact: Deep hands-on proficiency in Ab Initio GDE, EME, and the broader suite is a specialist credential that commands a premium in enterprise data markets and is not easily replicated by generalist data engineers.

Business Impact: The pipelines and warehouse subject areas this role delivers are the foundation that MI, analytics, and operational reporting teams depend on, and gaps in data availability or accuracy surface immediately in downstream business decisions.

Growth Opportunity: The scope here, spanning CDC pipeline design, CI/CD deployment, and Agile delivery cycles, positions a developer to move into data architecture or ETL lead roles where design authority expands significantly.

• Design and implement ETL pipelines spanning extraction, transformation, and load into relational and distributed warehouse environments.
• Develop and automate graph execution using shell scripting within UNIX-based scheduler frameworks.
• Analyze business and functional requirements and translate them into technical specifications and design documentation.
• Review code and architectural outputs to ensure alignment with pre-defined standards, catching defects before they reach production.
• Deploy and validate code across QA, UAT, and production environments within CI/CD workflows.
• Coordinate with onshore, offshore, and cross-functional technical teams to resolve cross-system impacts and deliver working code on schedule.
• Support production systems by diagnosing pipeline defects, optimizing ETL execution time, and handling database procedures, including backup and recovery.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent work experience.
• 5 or more years of ETL design and development experience, with demonstrated delivery of production-grade data pipelines.
• Strong proficiency in SQL, including complex query writing, optimization, and performance tuning across relational database platforms.
• Solid UNIX/Linux operating environment experience, including shell scripting for process automation and scheduled execution.
• Hands-on experience designing and integrating data warehouse subject areas using dimensional and relational modeling techniques.
• Working knowledge of big data and distributed processing concepts, including HDFS-based storage and Hadoop ecosystem components.
• Experience delivering within Agile project development lifecycles, including sprint planning, estimation, and iterative release cycles.

• Experience implementing Change Data Capture pipelines in a large-scale data integration or data warehouse project.
• Knowledge of advanced parallel processing and meta-programming concepts relevant to high-volume ETL throughput optimization.
• Familiarity with version control and CI/CD tooling used in enterprise ETL deployment pipelines.
• Exposure to HR enterprise systems or financial data platforms as source systems in ETL integration projects.

• ETL execution time per pipeline run, measured against SLA targets defined at sprint acceptance.
• Defect escape rate to production, reflecting code review and unit testing rigor before deployment.
• On-time delivery rate of project milestones within Agile sprint cycles.
• Mean time to resolution for production pipeline incidents escalated to this developer.
• Code reuse ratio across pipeline components, indicating architectural discipline in modular design.
• Typical tools: ETL platform (commonly Ab Initio GDE, EME, Control Center); scheduler (commonly Autosys or equivalent); version control (commonly Git)

• Base Salary Range: $115,000 to $155,000 annually
• Bonus: Annual performance bonus, typically 8 to 12 percent of base
• Equity: RSUs are common at larger technology and financial services employers
• Health Benefits: Medical, dental, and vision; employer contribution standard
• PTO: 15 to 20 days annually, plus federal holidays
• Common Perks: Remote or hybrid flexibility, professional development budget, conference attendance

Figures are estimates based on general US market benchmarks and may be outdated. Adjust based on location, company size, and seniority level.

Employment is contingent on successful completion of a background check, which may include verification of prior employment and education history. All qualified applicants will receive equal consideration without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under applicable federal, state, or local law. Reasonable accommodations are available to applicants with disabilities throughout the hiring process upon request. Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States.

The Ab Initio Developer leads the most complex ETL development and platform design efforts, performing hands-on data transformations and data movement using Ab Initio and Ab Initio Express IT within a 24x7x365 enterprise environment. Working as the senior individual contributor and escalation point for development, QA, and production teams, this role shapes the reliability and quality of large-scale data warehouse operations and guides less experienced programming staff.

Key Responsibilities

• Acts in the highest-level technical role as an individual contributor and/or team lead for the most complex computer applications and/or application initiatives.
• Utilizes a thorough understanding of available technology, tools, and existing designs.
• Works on the most complex problems where analysis of situations or data requires evaluation of intangible variance factors.
• Plans, performs, and acts as the escalation point for the most complex platform designs, coding, and testing.
• Leads the most complex multiple modeling, simulations, and analysis efforts.
• Acts as an expert technical resource to programming staff in the program development, testing, and implementation process.
• Supports ongoing ETL efforts for Development, QA, and Production environments.
• Performs hands-on ETL development (data transformations and data movement) using Ab Initio and Ab Initio Express IT as key tools.
• Follows all enterprise software development lifecycle processes and standards.
• Develops and fosters a positive relationship with team members, team leads, and business partners.
• Develops and updates documentation, departmental technical procedures, and user guides.
• Acts as a lead in providing application design guidance and consultation, utilizing a thorough understanding of applicable technology, tools, and existing designs.
• Provides technical consultation and support in the development of computer applications and programs.
• Develops original and/or highly complex code and provides coding guidance to less experienced staff.

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of application development and implementation experience.
• 7+ years of ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) programming experience with Ab Initio products such as EME, Control Center, Metadata Hub, or Conduct IT.
• 5+ years of Ab Initio experience.
• 3+ years of data warehouse experience.
• 3+ years of SQL experience.
• 3+ years of Oracle experience.
• 5+ years of Linux experience.
• Experience with Big Data.
• Experience with Autosys.
• Experience with Waterfall and Agile project methodologies.
• Proficiency in verbal, written, and interpersonal communication skills.
• Strong skills in organizational, multi-tasking, and prioritizing.
• Knowledge of Oracle Financial Services Analytical Applications (OFSAA) Financial Service Data Foundation (FSDF).
• Availability to work non-standard business hours on an on-call basis in a 24x7x365 environment.

Reporting to the Wells Fargo Enterprise Data Technology team, the Ab Initio Developer delivers ETL processes for large data warehouse projects using Teradata, Ab Initio, and Autosys across all phases of the system development life cycle. Working closely with a technical team on complex troubleshooting, defect resolution, and enterprise-wide project implementation, this role builds the data infrastructure that makes reliable customer data analysis possible.

Core Functions

• Acts as a developer in providing application design guidance and consultation, utilizing a thorough understanding of applicable technology, tools, and existing designs.
• Analyzes highly complex business requirements, designs, and writes technical specifications to design or redesign complex computer platforms and applications.
• Develops simple or highly complex code.
• Verifies program logic by overseeing the preparation of test data, testing, and debugging of programs.
• Develops new documentation, departmental technical procedures, and user guides.
• Assures quality, security, and compliance requirements are met for the supported area and complies with the creation of or updates to and testing of the business continuation plan.

Qualifications & Experience

• Bachelor's degree or higher in information technology.
• 5+ years of application development and implementation experience.
• 3+ years of ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) programming experience.
• 3+ years of data warehouse experience.
• 2+ years of Ab Initio experience.
• 2+ years of Teradata experience.
• 3+ years of UNIX experience.
• Knowledge of incident management, gathering impacts, and analyzing data.
• Proficiency in verbal, written, and interpersonal communication skills.
• Strong skills in organizational, multi-tasking, and prioritizing.
• Ability to provide leadership to a virtual or remote team.
• Availability to travel up to 10% of the time.
• Availability to work outside of regular business hours.

Reporting to the broader development organization, the Ab Initio Developer owns end-to-end development lifecycle activities, including design, coding, testing, and deployment of ETL solutions using Ab Initio and large-scale data tools. Partnering with development teams, testing, operations, and architecture groups, this role ensures cross-system changes are coordinated effectively and that delivered solutions meet service level and performance requirements.

Primary Duties

• Participates in end-to-end development lifecycle activities of the application, including design, coding, testing, and deployment activities.
• Participates in code reviews to ensure that all solutions are aligned to pre-defined architectural specifications, identifies and troubleshoots application code-related issues, and reviews and provides feedback to any required final user documentation.
• Produces comprehensive tests for all developed code, and supports and participates in system and integrated testing across sub-systems as the need arises.
• Delivers project milestones on time and within budget.
• Coordinates and collaborates with technical partners for joint application development efforts.
• Researches and evaluates alternate solutions and provides recommendations for enhancing the application, provides technical support, including meeting service level and performance requirements, and diagnoses and evaluates inefficient processes and code.
• Works with other development teams, testing, operations, and architecture groups when changes in technology have cross-impacts across applications, and works in concert with other groups to discuss and address any cross-impacts.

Skills & Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• 5+ years of experience in the design and delivery of ETL solutions using Ab Initio (preferred) or other large ETL tools.
• Experience in UNIX and/or AIX operating environment and UNIX shell scripting.
• Experience as an Agile developer with a good understanding of SDLC methodologies and guidelines.
• Advanced knowledge of application, data, and infrastructure architecture disciplines.
• Knowledge of big data technologies such as Hadoop, HIVE, and Spark.
• Knowledge of architecture and design across all systems.
• Ability to collaborate with high-performing teams and individuals throughout the firm to accomplish common goals.

Sitting at the intersection of data architecture and hands-on ETL engineering, the Ab Initio Developer shapes best-fit solutions by designing, coding, and fine-tuning Ab Initio queries while maintaining a high-performing, highly available Ab Initio database. Operating across design, QA, UAT, and Production environments through CI/CD pipelines, this role integrates business requirements into deployed components and drives the development of new and reusable code.

Duties

• Plays a key role in designing and building solutions in the Ab Initio database.
• Performs a hands-on role involving design of the best-fit architecture, coding, and fine-tuning Ab Initio queries, and maintains a high-performing, highly available Ab Initio database.
• Understands existing system design and its components and makes recommendations towards the development of new code or the reuse of existing code.
• Analyzes business requirements, designs, implements, and integrates components, and develops design documentation artifacts.
• Performs deployment of code to QA, UAT, and Production in CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery).

Requirements

• Bachelor's or master's degree.
• 7+ years of ETL application development and implementation experience.
• 5+ years of hands-on development experience with Ab Initio (GDE 3.1 or higher) and its components, with strong technical experience in understanding, designing, and implementing Ab Initio jobs.
• 3+ years of experience with databases such as Teradata and MemSQL.
• Hands-on Ab Initio experience, including Express IT, EME, Control Center, Metadata Hub, or Conduct IT.
• Strong expertise in SQL concepts, writing complex queries, query optimization, and UNIX shell scripting.
• Experience working with Git.
• Experience in and following Agile methodologies.
• Knowledge of the Ab Initio execution environment, including shell scripting, debugging, and metadata.

A key member of the Global Technology practice, the Ab Initio Developer builds and delivers complex Ab Initio applications while helping to define, implement, and enforce standards and best practices across the organization. Collaborating across cross-functional technology teams and global business resources, this role ensures that design patterns, frameworks, and architectural standards are applied consistently to produce high-quality, high-performance application outcomes.

Functions

• Partners with global business resources and technical teams to analyze and implement requirements.
• Participates in development and delivers code with consistency, quality, best practices, and performance of applications.
• Collaborates closely with cross-functional technology teams.
• Ensures design patterns, frameworks, and architectural standards are implemented consistently across the organization.
• Maintains accountability for the quality of code and application development.
• Domestic and/or international travel may be required.

Experience & Qualifications

• 5 to 6 years of hands-on experience developing and designing strong Ab Initio-based solutions.
• Experience with the broader Ab Initio tool suite, such as Express IT, Continuous Flows, Control Center, and Query IT.
• Experience working in an Agile project development lifecycle.
• Experience with CI/CD, Jenkins, and automation.
• Strong in-depth knowledge of databases and database concepts.
• Knowledge of several advanced Ab Initio concepts, such as project architecture, meta-programming, vectors, parallelism, performance tuning, debugging, SMP/MPP architectures, and platform integrations, including Hadoop, Java, and C.
• Knowledge of how Ab Initio applications and systems interact with the underlying hardware ecosystem.
• Proficiency with Linux, including strong shell scripting skills.
• Strong communication skills that create effective cross-team collaboration and quality documentation.
• Ability to think outside the box and apply unconventional solutions to conventional problems.

Delivering a reliable, consumable data layer for enterprise applications depends on the Ab Initio Developer, who designs and builds CDC pipelines moving data into the Cloudera Hadoop platform while maintaining high code quality and automated testing standards. Based within a data integration environment requiring 10+ years of IT experience, this role supports ongoing pipeline operations and guides junior developers to advance the organization's data warehouse capabilities.

Accountabilities

• Works with Business Analysts and the Product team to gather data requirements.
• Designs and builds a CDC pipeline to move data into the Cloudera Hadoop platform.
• Transforms data to create a consumable data layer for various application uses.
• Supports data pipeline with bug fixes and additional enhancements.
• Documents technical design, operational runbook, and related materials.
• Maintains rigor in high code quality, automated testing, and other engineering best practices, with the ability to write reusable code components.

Technical Qualifications

• 10+ years of IT experience predominantly in Data Integration and Data Warehouse areas.
• 5+ years of ETL design and development experience using Ab Initio.
• 1 to 2 years of Data Integration project experience on Hadoop platform, preferably Cloudera.
• At least one project implementation of Ab Initio CDC (Change Data Capture) in a Data Integration/ETL project.
• Working knowledge of HDFS, Hive, Impala, and other related Hadoop technologies.
• Knowledge of OLTP and OLAP data models and other data warehouse fundamentals.
• Knowledge of Agile development practices.
• Proficiency in SQL with the ability to write well-performing queries.
• Experience with Unix/Linux shell scripting.
• Ability to unit test code thoroughly and troubleshoot issues in production environments.
• Ability to work independently and support other junior developers as needed.
• Java development experience is a plus.

As the Ab Initio Developer, this role delivers end-to-end design and development of Ab Initio-based ETL processes and MS SQL Server data warehouse solutions that support the HRDW and MI change portfolio across the HR Technology and Change team. The HR Technology team relies on this work to translate business stakeholder requirements into scalable warehouse architecture and consistent HR reporting outputs that meet data privacy, security, and compliance standards.

Activities

• Designs and implements an HR Data Warehouse and MI solution using Ab Initio, SQL, and data modelling.
• Works with business owners, business analysts, and solution architects to understand business requirements and solution design.
• Translates functional and technical requirements into IT solutions and prepares documentation and specifications for build and support handover.
• Estimates the level of effort required to develop code that meets acceptance criteria.
• Designs and develops subject areas within an MS SQL Server data warehouse and any MS SQL applications required to support the HR MI&A team, including end-to-end development of Ab Initio-based ETL processes from various source systems into SQL databases.
• Coordinates with onshore and offshore developers and delivers working code.
• Conducts peer reviews and provides documented constructive feedback.
• Ensures development meets all specifications and has successfully passed all tests, including unit, integration, regression, and system tests.
• Demonstrates traceability from functional design to technical design through to testing.
• Ensures performance, security, and availability of databases.
• Provides Tier-3 support and production release support, responding promptly to requests from the support team to resolve user queries and handle technical issues out of scope for support staff.
• Profiles server resource usage and optimizes and tweaks as necessary.
• Handles common database procedures such as upgrade, backup, recovery, and migration.
• Responsible for the technology implementation of changes.

Position Requirements

• Strong proficiency in data warehouse product stack and architecture.
• Strong proficiency in MS SQL and its variations among popular databases.
• Proven experience in delivery using Ab Initio and data modelling.
• Proven experience in metadata management and data quality management using Ab Initio.
• Proven experience in managing an ETL delivery team, leading and coordinating delivery across the development team.
• Experience within an HR, MI, and Analytics area.
• Experience with modern relational databases.
• Experience with HR enterprise systems such as SAP HR.
• Experience with productivity tools such as Jira, Bitbucket, and Confluence.
• Knowledge of best practices when dealing with relational and star schema databases.
• Skilled at optimising ETLs to reduce overall execution time.
• Exposure to data lake and big data infrastructure.
• Proficiency in troubleshooting common database issues.
• Familiarity with tools that aid in profiling server resource usage and optimising performance.

An Ab Initio Developer owns requirement analysis, estimation, design, and performance tuning of Ab Initio graphs built within the GDE environment and EME, including developing shell scripts to automate graph execution under UNIX. The work directly supports a migration from Java Batch and PL/SQL code to Ab Initio, contributing to distributed systems modernization across development, testing, and integration cycles.

Operational Focus

• Performs requirement analysis, estimation, scoping, design, review, and performance tuning.
• Highlights and tracks issues and risks in a timely fashion.
• Codes, tests, modifies, debugs, documents, and implements Ab Initio graphs utilizing the GDE environment and EME.
• Develops scripts to automate the execution of Ab Initio graphs using shell scripts under a UNIX environment.
• Develops technical specification documents.
• Helps develop test cases and plans to complete unit testing and supports system testing.
• Participates in design reviews, code reviews, unit testing, and integration testing.
• Develops code migration strategies from current Java Batch and PL/SQL code to Ab Initio.

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities

• Bachelor's degree or higher in computer science, engineering, or related technical field.
• 6+ years of experience in distributed systems development using Ab Initio software.
• Strong shell scripting skills, with experience encapsulating Ab Initio code for execution via automated schedulers.
• Experience with other Ab Initio suite of products, such as Control Center, ACE, BRE, and Metadata Hub.
• Exposure to open source ETL tools such as Talend, Pentaho, and Hadoop concepts, including HDFS and HBASE.
• Working knowledge of relational database management systems and experience writing SQL.
• Knowledge of core Java, JEE, and Web Services.