Lead GCP Data Engineer

Job Title: Lead GCP Data Engineer Pay Rate: $65-70/HR on W-2 Duration: 12 months Location: Charlotte, NC or Dallas, TX (5 days onsite) (Onsite interview) Key Skills/Experience - GCP (BigQuery, Dataflow), Delta Lake, and Dataplex, PYTHON, Airflow, Spark (10+ years Overall experience) We are looking for Lead GCP Data Engineer for a Banking Client with strong hands-on technical depth, data architecture and design experience, and proven technical leadership skills. This role will play a key part in modernizing the enterprise data platform, leading complex data engineering initiatives, and guiding design decisions as workloads transition from on-prem to Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The ideal candidate is comfortable operating as a technical lead, owning end-to-end data solutions, mentoring team members, and partnering closely with product owners and stakeholders.Required Qualifications & Skills Core Technical Skills • Expert-level data engineering experience in modern data stacks • Strong hands-on expertise with: • SQL (advanced transformations and optimization) • Python • PySpark / Spark • Deep experience building ETL / ELT pipelines at scale • Strong understanding of data transformations, data quality, and lineage Cloud & Platform (Must Have) • Strong Google Cloud Platform (GCP) experience, including: • Designing and deploying data pipelines on GCP • Cloud-native storage and processing patterns • Performance, cost optimization, and scalability considerations Data Architecture & Design • Strong experience in: • Data modeling (operational and analytical) • Delta Lake / modern data lakehouse concepts • Designing cloud-based data architectures for reporting and downstream systems • Ability to translate business requirements into clean, scalable technical designs DevOps / CI-CD • Hands-on experience with CI/CD pipelines using tools such as: • Jenkins • GitHub Actions • GitLab • Experience implementing automation and deployment standards for data platforms Additional Experience • Familiarity with tools like SSIS, SAS, or similar, to understand and migrate legacy code • Configuration-driven frameworks and understanding how enterprise data frameworks operate • Strong problem-solving, critical thinking, and adaptability • Proven ability to operate in a lead / senior capacity, influencing technical direction