Data Integration/Engineering Intern

The NYC Fire Pension Fund is looking for a Data Integration / Engineering Intern.

About the Role

We are looking for a practical, detail-oriented Data Integration / Engineering Intern to join our team. In this role, you won't need years of industry experience, but you will need strong logical reasoning, a solid grasp of SQL, and a knack for troubleshooting data issues.

You will work directly with our data pipelines to help clean, process, and ensure the reliability of our datasets. If you love solving puzzles using the process of elimination and enjoy turning messy data into structured, reliable information, this is a great fit for you.

Key Responsibilities

• Data Processing & ETL: Assist in building, maintaining, and monitoring data pipelines to ingest and transform data from multiple sources.
• Data Quality & Flagging: Identify anomalies, duplicate entries, or missing data. Write logic to flag questionable records for further review without breaking downstream processes.
• Troubleshooting: Use systematic problem-solving and process of elimination to root-cause why a pipeline failed or why a dataset looks incorrect.
• Database Maintenance: Write and optimize basic to intermediate SQL queries to analyze, clean, and validate stored data.
• Documentation: Keep brief, clear notes on data quality rules, flagged record criteria, and pipeline workflows.
• Communicating: You’ll be engaging office staff in learning about their work habits, how to handle a conversation and working in-person. The primary form of engagement is in-office with emphasis in face-to-face dialogue. You will be presenting work as well to your team members, staff, supervisors and leadership.

What We’re Looking For

Technical Skills

• SQL Foundations: Working knowledge of SQL (SELECT, JOINs, GROUP BY, WHERE filtering, CASE statements, and basic aggregations).
• Data Handling: Basic understanding of data structures (e.g., CSV, JSON, relational tables).
• Scripting (Bonus): Familiarity with Python, Bash, or another scripting language is a plus, but not required.

Mindset & Problem-Solving

• Process of Elimination: Excellent logical reasoning skills—you know how to isolate variables step-by-step to figure out where data is breaking.
• Attention to Detail: High instinct for spot-checking numbers and catching inconsistencies before they reach production.
• Common Sense & Ownership: You know when to ask for help, when to double-check your work, and how to apply practical logic to business rules.
• Curiosity: A natural desire to understand why data looks the way it does.
• Multiple Priorities: You’ll be exposed to a startup like environment where we all handle multiple projects at the same time given the amount of slack that may manifest itself by resources you might not have control.

What You’ll Gain

• Hands-on experience with real-world, enterprise-level data integration pipelines and development methodologies.
• Mentorship from experienced data engineers and analysts.
• Exposure to modern data stack tools and cloud environments.
• Practical experience handling large-scale data quality.
• Confidence in public speaking and presenting.