Data Platform Engineer (26-27)

Role: Data Platform Engineer

Data Platform Engineer for the 26–27 school year with a target start date of July 1, 2026. You will build and operate IDEA’s data infrastructure on Snowflake, enabling reliable, scalable data access for analytics, reporting, and research across multiple states.

Responsibilities

• Design and build automated ELT pipelines to ingest data from diverse source systems into Snowflake
• Configure and manage cloud-native ingestion tools and create Python-based pipelines when needed
• Build and maintain Bronze-layer tables including schema evolution, audit metadata, and lineage
• Implement ingestion validation and monitoring to detect issues early
• Document source configurations, refresh schedules, and troubleshooting procedures
• Administer Snowflake environments (databases, schemas, warehouses, access controls, and security settings)
• Optimize platform performance and cost (warehouse sizing, clustering, query analysis, resource monitoring)
• Manage Snowflake objects using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) patterns
• Implement security best practices: RBAC, encryption, auditing, and network policies
• Evaluate and adopt relevant new Snowflake capabilities
• Own Terraform definitions for Snowflake and related components
• Automate operational tasks (provisioning, access grants, environment setup)
• Build CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure changes with safe deployment practices
• Create reusable templates/modules to accelerate onboarding of new sources and domains
• Maintain documentation/runbooks; implement monitoring and alerting and observability (logging/metrics/alerts)
• Troubleshoot pipeline/platform failures using root-cause analysis
• Partner with Analytics Engineering, DataOps, and Data Governance; contribute to design discussions and code reviews
• Mentor peers and share platform knowledge via documentation and forums (senior engineers)

Requirements

• Hands-on experience building and operating ELT pipelines into Snowflake
• Experience with Snowflake administration (warehouses, databases/schemas, access controls, security)
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code (specifically Terraform)
• Ability to optimize for performance and cost
• Strong operational practices: validation, monitoring, alerting, documentation, and troubleshooting

Nice-to-haves

• Experience transitioning from legacy ETL to a lakehouse architecture
• Experience embedding observability into production data pipelines
• Experience working closely with Analytics Engineering, DataOps, and Data Governance partners

Location / Travel

• Full-time remote position based in Texas
• Preferred areas: Austin, El Paso, Houston, Permian Basin (Midland/Odessa), Rio Grande Valley, San Antonio, Tarrant County (Fort Worth); relocation welcome
• Minimal travel: 5–10% annually