Lead Data Enginer

Lead Data Engineer (Principal-Level)

• 4 days a week on site in Los Angeles (flexible start/end times if needed)

• The company has a free gym on site and a modern office that includes outdoor workspaces.

• Must be a U.S. citizen or Green Card Holder

Los Angeles, CA (Hybrid – 4 days onsite)

We’re partnering with a fast-growing, mid-size product-driven company that’s investing heavily in modern data infrastructure, AI, and self-service analytics.

This is a high-impact, principal-level role where you’ll operate at the intersection of data architecture, business strategy, and hands-on engineering—owning the evolution of their data platform and helping the business actually use data to make decisions.

The Opportunity

This is not a heads-down execution role.

You’ll step in as the technical and strategic leader of the data function, balancing a team of strong executors with architecture, stakeholder alignment, and business-facing leadership.

The company is currently running a split data environment (Snowflake + Big

Query) and is about to undergo a major consolidation into Snowflake on AWS, followed by a full dbt implementation to enable a scalable, self-service analytics model. You’ll own that transformation.

What You’ll Own

• Lead the migration from a fragmented data stack (Big

Query + Snowflake) into a unified Snowflake (AWS) environment

• Architect and implement dbt from the ground up to support scalable, governed data modeling

• Design clean, business-ready data models that drive decision-making across teams

• Partner directly with executives, product, and business stakeholders to translate needs into data solutions

• Establish source-of-truth frameworks and eliminate conflicting metrics across systems

• Guide best practices across data modeling, transformation, and documentation

• Support a shift toward self-service analytics + AI-driven workflows

• Collaborate with engineering on data pipelines, performance, and scalability

• Act as the bridge between technical teams and the business

What Makes This Role Different

• Highly visible, business-facing (not just backend engineering)

• You’ll balance a team of strong IC executors who need architectural direction

• Opportunity to own a full data platform transformation

• Company is actively embracing AI tooling (including Claude and similar)—they want someone who leans into it, not against it

• Real opportunity to shape how the company uses data at scale

What They’re Looking For

Must-Have Technical Experience

• Strong experience with:

• Snowflake (required)

• AWS (required)

• dbt (or deep transformation-layer experience)

• Experience designing and scaling modern data warehouse architectures

• Strong SQL + Python for scripting and data workflows

• Experience working across multi-source, complex data environments

Leadership & Business Skills (Critical)

• Proven ability to work directly with stakeholders and business leaders

• Strong communication and data storytelling skills

• Ability to translate messy business problems into clean data solutions

• Experience acting as a technical lead, architect, or principal-level IC

• Comfortable balancing strategy with hands-on execution

Nice to Have

• Experience with Big

Query (migration context)

• Exposure to AI tools (Claude, LLM workflows, etc.)

• Background in building self-service analytics ecosystems