Lead Data Engineer

Liquor Marketing Group; Sydney; Hybrid; AUD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work arrangement

Competitive package

Job summary

Liquor Marketing Group in North Ryde, NSW is seeking a Lead Data Engineer to own architecture and guide engineers in a hybrid role. You will shape the Snowflake/dbt platform, drive data quality and performance, and report to the CIO.

The team works with AI tooling to produce production-grade code and enforce standards across delivery. You will lead a mature data stack including Snowflake, dbt and Airflow, ensuring scalable, cost-efficient pipelines and strong governance.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in data engineering, incl. 3+ years running Snowflake/dbt in production.
• Expert SQL and strong Python
• Solid experience with Airflow or equivalent orchestrator
• Fluency with Git, GitHub and CI/CD (GitHub Actions or similar), and Jira familiarity
• Track record as the technical go-to on a team; leadership mindset
• Production experience shipping through AI coding agents
• Ability to explain trade-offs to non-engineers and defend timelines

Responsibilities

• Own the platform's technical direction and architecture choices.
• Tune Snowflake for concurrency, cost, and reliability; manage resource monitors.
• Set and enforce dbt standards: repo layout, tests, and documentation.
• Enhance the datamart powering supplier/member portals.
• Lead migration of key calculation engines from SQL Server to Snowflake.
• Build the semantic layer feeding Cortex agents.
• Direct agentic development: specs, constraints and review gates.
• Own standards for Airflow DAGs and CI/CD gates to production.
• Collaborate on IaC with IT Operations rather than coding Terraform yourself.
• Mentor the internal team and align partner capabilities with the roadmap.
• Translate CIO/Analytics/Product needs into actionable specs.
• Make honest calls on what can be built and data requirements.

Skills

SQL

Python

Stakeholder communication

Mentoring

Architecture decisions

Data modeling

Lead without title

Education

Computer Science degree

Tools

Snowflake

dbt

Airflow

GitHub Actions

Terraform / IaC

Job description

Liquor Marketing Group · North Ryde, NSW · Hybrid (3 days in office, 2 flexible) · Full-time · Competitive package · Reports to the CIO

The role in one line

Lead Data Engineer

Liquor Marketing Group · North Ryde, NSW · Hybrid (3 days in office, 2 flexible) · Full-time · Competitive package · Reports to the CIO

Own the technical direction of a mature Snowflake and dbt platform, direct the engineers — human and AI - who build on it, and report straight to the CIO.

About us

Liquor Marketing Group (LMG) is one of Australia's largest independent liquor groups. Since 1977 we've given more than 1,400 independent retailers the collective strength to compete nationally, under brands including Bottlemart, Sip'n Save and Harry Brown. Our data platform sits between those members and the suppliers whose brands they stock: it powers the portals both sides use every day, runs the calculation engines behind pricing and promotions, and now feeds AI agents built on Snowflake Cortex.

The platform is mature: Snowflake, dbt and Airflow in production, fully automated deployments, and an architecture that's documented and enforced in code. We need someone to take a working system and push it further.

About the role

This is a hands-on technical leadership role, roughly 70% engineering and 30% guiding others. You will set the architecture, own code quality, and be the technical reality check between the business and the engineers.

You'll give technical direction to our internal engineering team and to a partner with multiple capabilities across our data stack.

One thing to know before you read on: we build with AI coding agents. Claude Code is our primary development tool and we no longer hand-write code. Your value here is judgement — architecture, specification, review, standards, guardrails — not keystrokes. If that excites you, keep reading. If you'd rather type it yourself, this isn't the role.

What you'll do

Own the platform's technical direction

• Extend our layered Snowflake/dbt architecture: SCD2 snapshots, a normalised 3NF landing layer, a Kimball star-schema datamart, and semantic views for Cortex. The approach is defined; you enforce it, refine it, and decide where it bends
• Tune the Snowflake environment for concurrency, cost and reliability, and use resource monitors and incremental models to keep spend predictable
• Set and hold dbt standards: repository layout, packages, tests, documentation, and the rule that transformation logic lives in dbt, not in BI tools

Deliver the roadmap

• Enhance the datamart that powers the supplier and member portals
• Lead the migration of key calculation engines from SQL Server to Snowflake
• Build out the semantic layer that feeds our Cortex agents

Run the engineering practice

• Direct agentic development: write the specs and constraints that let Claude Code produce production-grade dbt and Airflow code, and own the review gate that decides what ships
• Own the standards for Airflow DAGs and the CI/CD pipeline (GitHub Actions) that gates what reaches production
• Work within our infrastructure-as-code, partnering with IT Operations on requirements and enhancements rather than owning the Terraform yourself
• Mentor the internal team, set direction for the partner, and break the roadmap into deliverable Jira work

Be the bridge to the business

• Translate needs from the CIO, Analytics and Product into technical specs
• Give honest calls on what can be built, by when, and with what data

What you'll bring

• 7+ years in data engineering, including at least 3 years running Snowflake and dbt in production
• Expert SQL and strong Python
• Solid experience with Airflow or an equivalent orchestrator
• Fluency with Git, GitHub and CI/CD (GitHub Actions or similar), and comfort working in Jira
• A track record as the technical go-to on a team: standards others followed, reviews that acted as the final gate, architecture calls that stuck. A Lead title is not required; the behaviours are
• Production experience shipping through AI coding agents, and a clear view on how you keep quality high when you aren't the one typing
• The ability to explain trade-offs to non-engineers and hold a line when timelines are unrealistic

Nice to have: SQL Server migration experience, Snowflake Cortex or other LLM-on-data work, Power BI, retail or FMCG domain knowledge, and a degree in Computer Science or a related field (or equivalent experience).

What success looks like at 12 months

• The datamart is faster, broader and trusted by members and suppliers
• The priority calculation engines run in Snowflake, with SQL Server retired where it counts
• Cortex agents answer real business questions from a semantic layer you shaped
• Snowflake spend is monitored and predictable
• Internal and partner engineers work to standards you set, and know it

Applicants must have permanent right to work in Australia.