Senior Data Engineer

The Descartes Systems Group Inc.; Southwestern Ontario; Hybrid; CAD 49,000 - 76,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

Great benefits

Remote and flexible hours

Job summary

Descartes Systems Group Inc. is seeking a Senior Data Engineer to guide our data platform evolution. You will drive ELT migrations, build scalable data products, and mentor engineers across BI, product APIs, ML, and AI teams.

You will own dbt-based pipelines, enforce data contracts, and advance our Data Mesh while ensuring data quality and secure production systems. This is a hands-on remote role open to applicants in Brazil.

Qualifications

• Deep dbt, SQL, dimensional modeling, and data modeling expertise.
• Experience with PySpark and cloud data warehouses (Redshift, Snowflake, BigQuery).
• Proven ability to translate business needs into robust data products.
• Experience mentoring engineers and setting technical standards.

Responsibilities

• Lead ETL-to-ELT migration and governance initiatives.
• Advance Data Mesh with domain-owned data products and contracts.
• Own and mature dbt models, testing, and documentation.
• Strengthen semantic layer for consistent metrics across platforms.
• Improve platform reliability, observability, and security.
• Drive delivery and technical leadership across teams.

Skills

Data Mesh

ELT

dbt

SQL

PySpark

Mentoring engineers

AI development tools

Data modeling

Communication across teams

Tools

Redshift

Snowflake

BigQuery

AWS

S3

Glue

Athena

Airflow

Dagster

Kafka

SQS

Terraform

CI/CD

Job description

Descartes Unites the People and Technology that Move the World

The need for efficient, secure, and agile supply chains and logistics operations has become ever more critical and complex. By combining innovative technology, powerful trade intelligence and the reach of our network, Descartes helps get goods, information, transportation assets, and people where they’re needed, when they’re needed.

We’re one of the most broadly deployed logistics and supply chain technology companies in the world. More than 26,000 customers around the globe use our cloud‑based solutions to transform the way they move inventory and information to enhance productivity, better serve customers, thrive competitively, keep pace with evolving regulations, and respond to rapidly changing market conditions. Descartes is publicly traded (Nasdaq:DSGX, TSX:DSG) with headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, and offices and partners around the world. With record financial performance for more than 16 years, we lead the industry in innovation investment. Every day, logistics service providers, manufacturers, retailers, distributors, and other logistics‑intensive businesses of all sizes rely on our scale, stability, and comprehensive solution footprint to move what’s most important to them.

Learn more at www.descartes.com.

We’re growing fast and invite you to join our amazing team.

As a Senior Data Engineer, you will set the technical direction for a governed, scalable data platform that powers BI, product APIs, ML models, and customer‑facing AI assistants. You will lead our shift from ETL to ELT and advance our Data Mesh model, ensuring data products are well‑modeled, contract‑backed, reliable, and built to scale.

Outcomes - What Success Looks Like

• Lead our ETL-to-ELT migration, moving transformation logic from PySpark pipelines into version‑controlled SQL and dbt without disrupting existing consumers.
• Advance Data Mesh, establishing clear domain ownership, enforceable data contracts, safe schema evolution, and self‑service governance.
• Own and mature dbt, including model architecture, contracts, testing, lineage, documentation, and CI/CD.
• Strengthen our semantic layer, ensuring critical metrics are consistently defined and delivered at the correct grain across BI, APIs, ML, and AI.
• Improve platform reliability and engineering standards through stronger data quality, observability, testing, security, and production readiness.
• Raise team capability and delivery predictability through technical leadership, mentorship, planning, and AI‑assisted development practices.

Skills & Competencies - How the Work Gets Done

You are a hands‑on senior data engineer who can lead through technical expertise and influence. You bring:

• Practical Data Mesh experience with domain‑owned data products, enforceable contracts, federated governance, and schema evolution.
• Experience implementing ELT, ideally including migration from an existing ETL architecture.
• Deep dbt, SQL, dimensional modeling, and data modeling expertise, including grain, contracts, testing, lineage, and performance optimization.
• Experience with PySpark and cloud data warehouses such as Redshift, Snowflake, or BigQuery.
• Experience building scalable data platforms using technologies such as AWS, S3, Glue, Athena, Airflow/Dagster, Kafka/SQS, Terraform, and CI/CD.
• Strong data quality, testing, security, observability, and production engineering practices.
• Ability to translate business requirements into robust data products and communicate technical trade‑offs across Product, Analytics, BI, and Engineering.
• Experience mentoring engineers, setting technical standards, and using AI development tools such as GitHub Copilot or Claude Code.
• Bonus: experience with semantic/metrics layers, ML or LLM data products, BI platforms, or FastAPI.

Culture Add: TEAM Values

We value team members who communicate with transparency, sharing information openly and building trust across functions. You bring excellence and expertise to your craft, holding a high bar for quality while continuously improving your skills. You demonstrate accountability by owning outcomes, following through on commitments, and taking responsibility for results. You are driven by metrics, using data and experimentation to inform decisions and deliver measurable impact.

Aptitudes

• Smart: Able to quickly understand complex systems, connect ideas, and make sound judgments.
• Curious: Actively seeks to understand customer problems, emerging technologies, and better ways of working.
• Coachable: Open to feedback, willing to adapt, and continuously improving through learning.

What’s in It for You

You will join at an important stage in our data platform’s evolution, with meaningful influence over our move to ELT, Data Mesh, and governed data for AI. This is a hands‑on role with autonomy, visibility across technical and product leadership, and the opportunity to shape architecture and engineering standards while mentoring others and expanding your technical leadership over time.

Location: This is a remote opportunity, open to applicants authorized to work in Brazil. We are a global organization using English as our primary language, with localized communication where required. At Descartes, you will join a team committed to innovation, reliability, and continuous improvement as we build and support systems that power critical business operations worldwide. #LI‑Remote.

Join Us

As we scale, we’re looking for new doers, collaborators, and innovators to join Descartes in uniting the people and technology that move the world as the Global Leader in Logistics and Supply Chain Technology. We’re entrepreneurial, hardworking, geeky‑in‑a‑good way problem solvers. Guided by our values, we nurture a TEAM focused culture that invests in people and creates opportunities for advancement across a broad spectrum of career paths. We prioritize work‑life balance and foster an environment with the space to take ownership, to be heard, and to carve a path for your individual accomplishments to help drive our success. At Descartes, everyone has a voice and the best idea wins, regardless of who makes it. We offer competitive compensation, great benefits, remote and flexible work hours, and the opportunity to join a company on an awesome mission with a great existing team and trajectory.

Descartes also has a deep sense of environmental responsibility. Learn more about how we helped our customers save over 552,000 metric tons of CO2 in 2020 by reducing fuel and paper consumption: https://www.descartes.com/who-we-are/social-responsibility-sustainability/environmental-impact. Join a team that’s committed to working with customers to conserve resources and enhance sustainability.

We conduct a mix of in‑person and virtual interviews. Virtual interviews are held via Microsoft Teams and are recorded and transcribed. We may utilize AI tools to support our hiring team in note‑taking, summarization, and internal training. AI tools are not used in our recruitment process for decision‑making purposes. Recordings, transcripts, and notes are used for recruitment, including improvement of our process, and record‑keeping purposes. Should you have any questions or concerns about our process, please connect with our hiring team in advance of scheduled interviews.

We are an Equal Employment employer. We do not discriminate in hiring on the basis of sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religious creed, national origin, physical or mental disability, protected status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, provincial, or local law. For more information about our commitment to equal employment opportunity, please review our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics at Descartes.com