Senior Data Engineer

Role: Senior Data Engineer Location: Hybrid in Oak Park Heights, MN (3 days onsite per week) Duration: 6 months with potential to extend or convert Rate: $67.61-$70.55, dependent on skills and qualifications We are seeking a Senior Data Engineer to serve as the technical leader and engineering anchor for modern data platform initiatives. This is a hands-on engineering role for someone who can design scalable solutions, influence technical direction, and partner closely with architects, product teams, and distributed engineering teams. This is not a tool-focused role—we are looking for an engineer with strong architectural thinking who understands how to build reliable, scalable data solutions from the ground up. What You'll Do • Lead the design and development of enterprise-scale data pipelines and data products • Partner with architects and engineering teams to establish and enforce data engineering best practices • Drive technical decisions around data ingestion, transformation, modeling, and delivery • Design scalable, resilient, and high-performing solutions across the full data lifecycle • Collaborate with both onshore and offshore teams, providing technical leadership and mentorship • Influence delivery teams on implementation approaches, standards, and engineering quality • Optimize performance, reliability, governance, and operational excellence across the data platform Required Skills & Experience Must-Have Qualifications • 8+ years of Data Engineering experience • Strong expertise with Snowflake • Experience building and optimizing complex data pipelines at scale • Advanced SQL and data modeling skills • Strong programming experience with Python and/or Spark • Experience designing data architectures and scalable engineering frameworks • Ability to lead technical discussions and influence engineering teams • Excellent communication and stakeholder engagement skills • Experience working with distributed or offshore engineering teams Preferred Experience • dbt • Fivetran or similar enterprise data ingestion frameworks • Azure services including: • Azure DevOps (ADO) • Azure Blob Storage • Azure Functions • Metadata-driven or configuration-driven pipeline development • Data Vault, Dimensional Modeling, or Star Schema design • Data governance, observability, and DataOps practices • Building data foundations that support AI/ML use cases What We're Looking For The ideal candidate is a senior engineer who thinks like an architect. You understand not only how to build solutions, but why they should be built a certain way. You can evaluate tradeoffs, challenge assumptions, and guide teams toward scalable, maintainable outcomes. We're looking for someone who can: • Design solutions, not just implement requirements • Influence technical direction and engineering standards • Communicate effectively with engineers, architects, and business stakeholders • Balance hands-on delivery with technical leadership Work Arrangement • Hybrid schedule: 3 days onsite each week in Oak Park Heights, MN • Contract-to-hire opportunity with long-term growth potential • Candidates must be able to work onsite regularly