Technical Lead – Data Engineering
Location: Tempe, AZ – 4 Days Onsite
Job Type: Full-Time
Experience: 12+ Years
Salary: $150,000–$155,000 + Benefits
Job Overview
We are seeking an experienced Technical Lead – Data Engineering to serve as a key technical and client-facing leader across data engineering, production support, and application development workstreams.
The ideal candidate will have strong hands-on expertise in Snowflake, Python, SQL, AWS, Airflow, and modern data engineering practices, combined with excellent communication and leadership skills. This role requires someone who can work directly with client stakeholders while effectively coordinating with distributed/offshore engineering teams.
The successful candidate will take ownership of production support, technical delivery, stakeholder communication, and overall data platform reliability.
Key Responsibilities
- Serve as the primary technical point of contact for client stakeholders and coordinate day-to-day activities across support and development teams.
- Lead production support activities including pipeline monitoring, incident triage, data validation, escalation, and SLA management.
- Coordinate with distributed/offshore teams to ensure effective delivery and timely resolution of technical issues.
- Translate business requirements into technical solutions and communicate technical status, risks, and dependencies to stakeholders.
- Design, develop, and support scalable Snowflake-based data solutions and ETL/ELT pipelines.
- Develop and manage Apache Airflow workflows and data orchestration frameworks.
- Build and maintain Power BI-ready datasets, semantic models, and analytics layers.
- Drive automation, testing, monitoring, CI/CD, and DataOps best practices.
- Participate in incident management, root-cause analysis, and continuous improvement initiatives.
- Manage multiple workstreams while prioritizing production support and business-critical activities.
- Provide technical leadership and proactively identify risks, issues, and opportunities for improvement.
- Support time-sensitive production issues and demonstrate flexibility when business-critical support is required.
Required Skills & Qualifications
- 12+ years of experience in Data Engineering, Cloud Data Platforms, or related technical engineering roles.
- Strong hands-on expertise in Snowflake, including architecture, data modeling, performance tuning, Streams, and Tasks.
- Strong proficiency in Python and advanced SQL.
- Proven experience developing and supporting enterprise-scale ETL/ELT pipelines in production environments.
- Strong experience with Apache Airflow, including workflow orchestration and incident management.
- Hands-on experience with AWS services, including S3, Glue, Lambda, CloudWatch, Secrets Manager, SNS/SQS.
- Experience with Power BI datasets, semantic models, and report validation.
- Strong understanding of Git, CI/CD, and DataOps practices.
- Experience in a client-facing technical leadership role.
- Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and problem-solving skills.
- Experience coordinating between onsite/client teams and offshore or distributed engineering teams.
- Strong production support experience with defined SLAs, incident response, and RCA.
- Ability to prioritize and manage multiple technical workstreams effectively.
- Experience integrating data from APIs, SaaS platforms, and enterprise applications.
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with Snowflake Cortex, Cortex Analyst, or Cortex Search.
- Experience with Cursor IDE and AI-assisted/Spec-Driven Development.
- Experience with Terraform / Infrastructure as Code.
- Exposure to Datadog or enterprise monitoring platforms.
- Experience implementing AI/GenAI-driven data engineering solutions.
- Experience working in Agile product delivery environments.
- Exposure to data platform modernization initiatives.
- Experience with retail, consumer, or QSR domains.
What We’re Looking For
We are looking for a hands-on technical leader who can operate confidently in a client-facing environment, take ownership of critical issues, and provide clear technical direction to engineering teams.
The ideal candidate should be proactive, accountable, and comfortable working across both technical delivery and stakeholder management. Strong communication and the ability to build trust with clients are essential.
Additional Requirements
- Candidates who can join at the earliest are strongly preferred.
- Must have valid, independent U.S. work authorization.
- No current or future sponsorship is available for this position.
- This position requires 4 days onsite per week in Tempe, AZ.