Data Engineer

Talentfoot Executive Search; Pittsburgh (Allegheny County); On-site; USD 90,000 - 135,000; Full time

Job summary

Talentfoot Executive Search seeks a founding Data Engineer to lead a Snowflake-based modernization, owning data strategy end-to-end and collaborating with the VP of Engineering and business leadership. You will build pipelines, models, and APIs powering dashboards and AI insights across the organization.

The role offers growth with data science and AI initiatives, a rare opportunity to shape a new data platform in a high-impact, lean environment.

Qualifications

• End-to-end production data pipelines ownership.
• 5+ years of progressive data engineering experience.
• Deep Snowflake experience with schema design and cost management.
• Production experience with dbt Core, Python (FastAPI), and SQL.
• Experience with ELT tools like Airbyte or Fivetran and CRM APIs.
• Self-starter with strong business communication and curiosity.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate ELT pipelines from multiple source systems into Snowflake.
• Develop dbt models across staging and mart layers for customer and product data.
• Create Python-based system-to-system sync jobs with idempotent design.
• Establish data governance, data contracts, and automated quality checks.
• Build API endpoints (FastAPI) serving Snowflake data to internal app.
• Design executive dashboards and reporting in collaboration with stakeholders.
• Maintain legacy data flows while migrating to modern equivalents.
• Document architectural decisions to preserve institutional knowledge.

Skills

5+ years data engineering

Snowflake experience

dbt Core

Python

FastAPI

SQL

Airbyte

Fivetran

CRM APIs

REST APIs

Data pipelines

Data governance

Strong communicator

Tools

Snowflake

dbt Core

Python

FastAPI

Airbyte

Fivetran

REST APIs

Job description

Company Overview

Our client pioneered fully digital purchasing in its industry more than 25 years ago, building an innovative online marketplace from the ground up that today serves thousands of professional customers across North America. The company pairs that eCommerce heritage with a genuinely customer centric, family like culture, backed by competitive compensation and an attractive profit sharing program, and has been recognized by its manufacturing partners with distribution excellence awards for sustained sales growth and service quality. Now, after three decades of steady growth, the company is investing in a major digital transformation of its data infrastructure and is hiring a founding Data Engineer to help make it happen.

Company Overview

Our client pioneered fully digital purchasing in its industry more than 25 years ago, building an innovative online marketplace from the ground up that today serves thousands of professional customers across North America. The company pairs that eCommerce heritage with a genuinely customer centric, family like culture, backed by competitive compensation and an attractive profit sharing program, and has been recognized by its manufacturing partners with distribution excellence awards for sustained sales growth and service quality. Now, after three decades of steady growth, the company is investing in a major digital transformation of its data infrastructure and is hiring a founding Data Engineer to help make it happen.

Position Overview

This is a rare chance to be the founding data engineer on a ground up modernization, moving the organization from a fragmented legacy platform to a modern Snowflake based stack. You will own the data strategy end to end, working directly with the VP of Engineering and business leadership rather than executing tickets handed down through layers of management. Your work will have immediate, visible impact: the pipelines and models you build will power executive dashboards, AI driven insights, and a custom internal application used across the business. As the company grows into data science and AI, this role is positioned to grow with it, and the person who proves themselves here will help shape what that future team looks like.

Position Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate reliable ELT pipelines that unify data from seven operational source systems (CRM, marketing automation, ERP, telephony, product database, and web analytics) into a Snowflake based Medallion Architecture
• Build and maintain dbt models across staging and mart layers, including unified customer and product master tables that enable customer 360, revenue attribution, margin, and pipeline health reporting
• Develop Python based system to system sync jobs with incremental, idempotent, and resumable design so failures never corrupt source records
• Establish data trust and governance practices: data contracts, automated quality checks, reconciliation between source systems, and documented lineage for every production table
• Build FastAPI endpoints serving curated Snowflake data to an internal React application, including write back functionality and role based access control
• Design and own executive facing dashboards and reporting infrastructure, partnering directly with business stakeholders to translate requirements into well structured data models
• Work within a Strangler Fig migration pattern, maintaining legacy data flows while incrementally replacing them with modern equivalents
• Document architectural decisions so the organization builds institutional knowledge rather than dependency on individuals

Required

Position Qualifications

• A proven track record of building and owning production data pipelines end to end, not just consuming or analyzing data prepared by others
• A minimum of 5 years of progressive data engineering experience, ideally within eCommerce, SaaS, or another data rich B2B environment
• Deep hands on Snowflake experience, including schema design, warehouse sizing, and cost management
• Production experience with dbt Core, strong Python (including FastAPI development), and expert level SQL
• Experience with ELT tooling such as Airbyte or Fivetran and with CRM APIs, including REST and Bulk APIs
• A self starter mindset with strong business communication skills and the curiosity to learn new tools quickly and wear multiple hats in a lean organization

Preferred

• Experience in a product heavy B2B, manufacturing, or distribution environment where catalog and inventory data are critical
• Familiarity with Azure, CI/CD for data pipelines, GA4 and BigQuery, and BI tools such as Sigma, Tableau, Power BI, or Streamlit