Data Platform Engineer (26-27)

Role Overview

Data Platform Engineer for IDEA Public Schools’ 2026–27 school year (target start: July 1, 2026). You will build and operate IDEA’s production-grade data infrastructure on Snowflake, enabling reliable, scalable access to data for analytics, reporting, and research.

Responsibilities

• Design and build automated ELT pipelines to ingest data from diverse source systems into Snowflake.
• Configure cloud-native ingestion tools and implement Python-based pipelines when needed.
• Build and maintain Bronze-layer tables with schema evolution, audit metadata, and lineage.
• Implement ingestion validation and monitoring; catch data issues early.
• Administer Snowflake components: databases, schemas, warehouses, access controls, and security.
• Optimize performance and cost (warehouse sizing, clustering, query analysis, resource monitoring).
• Manage Snowflake objects using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) patterns.
• Apply security best practices: RBAC, encryption, auditing, network policies.
• Own Terraform-based infrastructure 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.
• Develop reusable templates/modules to accelerate onboarding of new sources/domains.
• Maintain documentation and runbooks for operations.
• Implement monitoring and alerting for pipeline and platform health.
• Troubleshoot failures using systematic root-cause analysis; embed observability (logging, metrics, alerts).
• Partner with Analytics Engineering, DataOps, and Data Governance; participate in reviews and design discussions.

Supervisory / Collaboration

• Individual contributor role; no direct reports.
• Senior engineers may mentor peers and lead technical initiatives.

Location & Travel

• Full-time remote from Texas, with preference for specific Texas metro/regions (Austin, El Paso, Houston, Permian Basin, Rio Grande Valley, San Antonio, Tarrant County/Fort Worth) or willingness to relocate.
• Minimal travel (5–10% annually).

Requirements

• Hands-on experience building and operating production ELT/data ingestion on Snowflake.
• Strong skills in Python for data pipeline implementation.
• Ability to manage Snowflake administration (warehouses, access/security, environments).
• Experience with Terraform and infrastructure-as-code.
• Ability to implement monitoring/alerting, validation, observability, and reliable production operations.

Nice to Have (implied)

• Experience transitioning from legacy ETL to lakehouse architecture.
• Familiarity with RBAC/security hardening and Snowflake governance controls.
• CI/CD practices for infrastructure changes and safe deployments.