Senior Data Architect- Hybrid- MN Locals (Need GC or Citizens)

🚀 Senior Data Engineer/Architect (Platform & Architecture)💼 Job Details • Job Type: Contract-to-Hire • Location: Hybrid • Eligibility: 🇺🇸 USC and GC Only 🌐 Overview The Data & AI Team is building the future of local media by deploying end-to-end, high-impact solutions that solve complex data and AI challenges. This is a brand-new role created from splitting a hybrid AI/Data position, now entirely focused on data platform engineering and architecture. We are seeking a visionary engineer to lead the development, infrastructure, and architectural design of a modern data ecosystem powering analytics, AI, and personalization. 🎯 Key Focus Areas • Scalable Infrastructure: Build production-grade data foundations supporting analytics, AI initiatives, and customer intelligence. • Pipeline Development: Lead the development of Python-based ELT/ETL pipelines. • Snowflake Ownership: Own the platform architecture, performance, and cost optimization. • Data Modeling: Design scalable schemas for cross-channel insights and reusable data products. 📋 Responsibilities • ⚙️ Data Engineering: Build, deploy, and maintain scalable ELT/ETL pipelines using Python & SQL; develop reusable ingestion frameworks and connectors. • 🛡️ Quality & Governance: Implement data quality checks, testing, anomaly detection, and establish data governance and lineage standards. • 🤖 AI-Assisted Dev: Apply agentic development practices (AI-assisted development, automated testing, and documentation). • ❄️ Snowflake Management: Optimize performance, storage, and compute efficiency; configure resources, clustering keys, and scaling policies. • ♾️ DevOps & CI/CD: Automate infrastructure deployments via CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code. 🛠️ The Tech Stack & Environment • Data Platform: Snowflake ❄️ • Engineering: Python 🐍 | SQL 💾 • Orchestration & Transform: Airflow 🌪️ | dbt 🏗️ • Cloud Infrastructure: AWS (Primary) ☁️ | GCP (Growing) 🌐 • Business Intelligence: Domo 📊 • The Team & Culture: 1 Data Engineer, 1 Data Scientist + report engineers. Startup-like, high ownership, and AI-forward innovation. 💡 High-Impact Initiatives • 👥 Customer 360: Building a unified customer data platform. • 📈 User Journey Graph: Developing cross-channel behavioral tracking systems. • 🧠 Personalization & Recommendations: Driving AI-powered user engagement. 🔑 Qualifications Required Skills • 5+ years of production-grade data engineering experience. • Strong experience with cloud data platforms (Snowflake highly preferred). • Deep knowledge of data architecture, quality frameworks, and data governance. • Advanced SQL skills (optimized for distributed compute environments). • Hands-on experience with orchestration tools like Airflow and dbt. • Solid software engineering fundamentals (building APIs, working with major data libraries). Nice to Have • Advanced Snowflake features (Streams, Tasks, Snowpipe, Snowpark). • Experience or strong interest in MLOps, NLP, or AI/ML systems. 🤝 Leadership & Culture Fit • Mentor: Passionate about coaching junior engineers and promoting engineering best practices. • Innovator: Thrives in ambiguous, greenfield environments and loves building AI-driven platforms from scratch. • Communicator: Bridges the gap effortlessly between technical requirements and non-technical business goals. • Automator: Possesses a strong problem-solving mindset focused on scalability and automation.