Senior Data Engineer

Boardwalk; Calgary; On-site; CAD 120,000 - 160,000; Part time

Job summary

Boardwalk is seeking a Senior Data Engineer to drive the migration of legacy SQL Server environments to Azure SQL Managed Instance and to lead the data architecture for modern BI. The role requires deep expertise in ADF, data modeling for Power BI, and strong cross-functional leadership to coordinate with BI and operations teams.

The candidate will oversee environment assessments, data validation, and rollback planning, ensuring data quality and minimal business disruption during the cloud

Qualifications

• Extensive experience migrating on-premises SQL Server to Azure SQL MI.
• Strong knowledge of Azure Data Factory, data pipelines, and CDC.
• Ability to design scalable BI data models for Power BI.
• Excellent communication and leadership for cross-functional teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture and migration execution from SQL Server 2017 to Azure SQL MI.
• Refactor and scale ADF pipelines to meet latency SLAs.
• Define monitoring, validation, and rollback procedures.
• Collaborate with BI to optimize Power BI models.

Skills

Data engineering

Leadership

Migration planning

Data quality

Cross-team collaboration

Tools

Azure Data Factory

SQL Server 2017

Azure SQL Managed Instance

Power BI

CDC mechanisms

ExpressRoute/VPN

Job description

Job Description

Boardwalk provides Canadians with a quality, comfortable, home living experience. We offer rental apartments and townhouses that come in a wide breadth of shapes, sizes and sets of amenities. We operate over 34,000 units across Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Quebec.

This is a contract position.

About The Role

The Senior Data Engineer provides architectural direction, technical leadership, and execution oversight for our core database modernization initiative. This role is responsible for shaping and guiding the migration strategy, including environment assessment, data validation, reconciliation, monitoring, and quality controls required to support a controlled transition from legacy SQL Server environments to Azure SQL Managed Instance. Combining deep expertise in legacy database platforms with modern Azure data technologies, this individual will help reduce migration risk, improve confidence in data quality, and establish the foundation for future business intelligence and data platform capabilities.

Key Responsibilities

Architecture & Migration Execution

• Lead the architectural design and structural execution of our migration from a 30-year-old on-premises SQL Server 2017 setup to Azure SQL Managed Instance.
• Conduct extensive legacy assessments on decades-old schemas to isolate compatibility gaps, remediate depreciated items, and clear performance blocks for Azure PaaS transition.
• Build, enforce, and test rigorous migration fallback and rollback procedures alongside active live data flows to safeguard enterprise operations.
• Orchestrate and lead database cutover activities to support a controlled transition to Azure with minimal business disruption.

ETL Ownership & Pipeline Optimization

• Lead the technical stewardship, evolution, and operational success of our established Azure Data Factory (ADF) ETL framework and active data synchronization strategies.
• Review, refactor, and scale existing ADF data pipelines to confidently meet high-throughput requirements and strict data latency SLAs.
• Partner directly with our Business Intelligence (BI) team to design, build, and optimize net-new ETL pipelines optimized for Power BI semantic models and dashboards.

Observability, Monitoring & Integrity

• Establish advanced alerting, schema drift detection, error-handling, and automated recovery scripts within the ADF environment.
• Apply systematic monitoring, validation, and reconciliation controls to assess data consistency between on-premises and cloud environments during dual-run operations.
• Coach internal stakeholders on pipeline health metrics and run regular post-migration data audits to ensure permanent operational readiness.

Technical Requirements

• Expert-level proficiency in Azure Data Factory (including Mapping Data Flows, Self-Hosted Integration Runtimes, and CDC mechanisms).
• Expert-level database administration and engineering depth with Microsoft SQL Server (specifically SQL Server 2017 and legacy paradigms).
• Deep hands-on experience deploying, sizing, performance-tuning, and maintaining Azure SQL Managed Instance environments.
• Strong grounding in BI data modeling concepts, star/snowflake schemas, and data warehouse formatting tailored for Power BI consumption.
• Practical understanding of hybrid network infrastructure configurations required for secure cloud data streaming (VPN gateways, ExpressRoute, and VNet isolation).

Non-Technical Requirements

• Excellent communication skills; able to clearly explain migration logic, cutover risks, and architectural compromises to business leaders.
• Strong leadership presence with the ability to confidently steer cross-functional technical teams without direct organizational authority.
• Highly skilled at navigating decades-old undocumented database logic, providing clear structure out of systemic ambiguity.
• Demonstrates strong ownership, accountability, and technical leadership in maintaining reliable, well-governed data pipelines and migration processes.