Lead Data Engineer

The Foundation

We are the largest nonprofitfighting poverty disease and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere regardless of identity or circumstances should have the chance to live healthy productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve.We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical dental and vision coverage with no premiums generous paid time off paid family leave foundation-paid retirement contribution regional holidays and opportunities to engage in several employee communities.As a workplace were committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.

The Team

*This position is a limited-term position for 36 months. Relocation will not be provided.

Your Role

As a Lead Data Engineer you are an experienced technical leader for the foundations Modern Data Platform. You are responsible for developing delivering and improving scalable secure and high-performing data solutions. These solutions enable enterprise reporting analytics search AI and data-driven decision-making across the foundation and its affiliates. You operate with a high degree of independence and accountability serving as both a hands-on technical leader and a practice lead who shapes engineering standards mentors engineers and strengthens overall data platform capability. You translate complex organizational and technical challenges into practical data engineering strategies and scalable platform solutions. You are accountable not just for delivering pipelines or datasets but for ensuring the health reliability performance governance and long-term sustainability of the enterprise data ecosystem.

What Youll Do

Technology & Architecture Leadership

• Define and evolve the data engineering technology roadmaps aligned to business strategies enterprise architecture information security standards.

• Provide architectural leadership on complex cross-team data initiatives ensuring solutions are scalable secure resilient and maintainable.

• Lead data platform and vendor evaluations guiding build vs. buy decisions and ensuring consistency with enterprise technical direction.

• Develop and promote data engineering standards forlakehousearchitecture ELT/ETL frameworks data modeling CI/CD observability and governance.

• Anticipate technology impacts across applications data integrations and infrastructureand guide teams through informed trade-off decisions including assessing new technology.

Solution Delivery & Engineering Excellence

• Day-to-day hands-on execution and implementation of solutions - using modern data platforms initiatives processes and practices.

• Be responsible for technical direction for large or multi-team delivery efforts ensuring application of modern data engineering andDevSecOpspractices.

• Conduct architectural and technical reviews of solution designs code and delivery approaches to raise quality and consistency.

• Champion automation observability and operational excellence to ensure platforms remain reliable performant and cost effective.

• Pilot emerging technologies and guide their adoption into stable enterprise capabilities when appropriate.

• Drive continuous improvement of engineering practices tooling automation and operational processes.

Service & Portfolio Strategy

• Partner with service managers and product owners to shape data service strategies roadmaps and investment priorities.

• Translate complex system challenges into actionable plans aimed to improve sustainability lifecycle health and user experience.

• Provide senior-level support to annual planning including resource needs modernization opportunities risks and capacity considerations.

• Represent technology perspectives in strategic and portfolio discussions ensuring alignment between business direction and technical capability.

Leadership Influence & Collaboration

• Serve as a lead for the practice and senior mentor coach data engineers and contingent staff as well as managing service partners

• Build strong collaborative relationships across IT Business Operations and programmatic teams.

• Lead cross-functional data architecture and design discussions guiding teams through ambiguity with clarity sound judgment and tactical planning.

• Communicate effectively across technical and non-technical audiences including senior leadership converting complex concepts into clear implications and recommendations.

• Representing IT in foundation working groups governance forums and cross-team initiatives coordinating efforts to reflect broader strategies and priorities.

• Lead core initiatives partnering across Program Strategy Teams Operations and IT.

Your Experience

• Bachelors degree or equivalent experience typically requires an advanced degree or equivalent experience and a minimum of 10 years of relevant data engineering experience in enterprise environments.

• Mastery-level knowledge of the data engineering field and modern data platform technology delivery with deep experience in one or more key domains such aslakehousearchitecture distributed data processing cloud data warehousing data transformation frameworks or data governance.

• Demonstrated ability to build and complete implementation plans for complex enterprise-scale data platforms and pipelines. These platforms support analytics reporting AI/ML and operational decision-making. They also impact on the achievement of the foundations priorities.

• Proven experience developing and implementing standards processes and operational plans that improve stability resilience security and performance of critical data platforms.

• Deep expertise with cloud-based data platforms - Azure Data services Databricks Snowflake and DBT cloud.

• Strong foundation in enterprise data architecture fields and the development of secure scalable aligned technology solutions.

• Advanced experience with CI/CD pipelines for data workloads infrastructure as code cloud-native operational models and modern version control strategies.

• Strong proficiency in programming using data processing tools like Azure Data FactoryFivetran Databricks notebook DBT cloud ETL/ELT frameworks as well as programming languages such as Python SQL Spark (PySpark/Scala) and scripting languages common to cloud data environments.

• Demonstrated success leading large-scale and complex data modernization initiatives including migration from legacy data warehouses to modern cloud-based data platforms.

• Experience managing and reviewing vendors or offshore engineering work to ensure alignment with enterprise data standards architecture principles and long-term sustainability.

• Excellent communication and influencing skills with the ability to clearly and succinctly translate complex data architecture concepts into actionable recommendations for senior leadership technical teams and non-technical partners across multiple functions.

• Demonstrated ability to enable AI through data with a strong understanding of AI use cases and the data architecture quality governance lineage and scalability requirements necessary to successfully support AI initiatives.

• Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities demonstrating a dedication to operational excellence continuous learning and improving data engineering practices.

• May mentor review and delegate work to more junior engineers building capability and maturity across the data engineering group.

Must have unrestricted work authorization in the country where this position is located. The Foundation does not provide immigration-related sponsorship for this role. This includes direct company sponsorship and any work authorization requiring a written submission or other immigration support from the company (eg: H-1B O-1 L-1 E OPT STEM-OPT CPT TN J-1 etc.).

The salary range for this role is $190100.00 to $294700.00 USD. We recognize high-wage market differences in Seattle and Washington D.C. where our offices are located. The range for this role in these locations is $209100.00 to $324100.00 USD. As a mission-driven organization we strive to balance competitive pay with our mission. New hires salaries are typically between the range minimum and the salary range midpoint. Actual placement in the range will depend on a candidates job-related skills experience and expertise as evaluated during the interview process.

Hiring Requirements

As part of our standard hiring process for new employees employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.

Candidate Accommodations

Were committed to providing an inclusive and accessible hiring experience for all candidates. If you have a disability or medical condition and need an accommodation at any stage of the application or interview processsuch as an ASL interpreter alternative interview format or physical accessibility supportwere happy to help. Please contact with the position number and a brief description of your accommodation needs. Requests will be handled confidentially.

Inclusion Statement

We are dedicated to the belief that all lives have equal value. We strive for a global and cultural workplace that supports ever greater diversity equity and inclusion of voices ideas and approaches and we support this diversity through all our employment practices.

All applicants and employees who are drawn to serve our mission will enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment without regard to race color age religion pregnancy sex sexual orientation disability gender identity gender expression national origin genetic information veteran status marital status and prior protected activity.