Data Engineering Lead - Build & Mentor Modern Data Stack

Rewards Network; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 190,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Full-time exempt position

Annual bonus target 15%

Flexible PTO

Dining reimbursement

401(k) match

Medical plans

Job summary

Rewards Network is seeking a Data Engineering Lead to drive the modern data engineering foundation while providing technical leadership across data engineering and data science. The team is mid-migration; the role ensures architectural clarity and disciplined execution.

The candidate will act as a hands-on player-coach, building out the competency as a long-term pillar, initially managing the Data Science team and prioritizing work to clear roadblocks in a hybrid in-office role in Chicago.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• 6–10 years of experience in data engineering.
• 2+ years in a technical lead or staff-level IC role.
• Familiarity with data science workflows, ML model lifecycle, and MLOps concepts.
• Expertise in data engineering — model design, testing, and boundary governance.
• Experience designing and enforcing data modeling standards in a team environment.
• Experience with CI/CD for data pipelines (GitLab or equivalent).
• Experience with data observability and monitoring.

Responsibilities

• Establish and enforce architecture standards to ensure consistent designs and repeatable results.
• Assess the current state of our data infrastructure and decide what to refactor or replace; execute with the team.
• Lead the build-out of the modern data stack, including ELT pipelines, stream ingestion, transformation, storage and compute.
• Hire and develop data engineering talent; mentor and grow the team.
• Define and maintain the data model RFC process and enforce boundary discipline.
• Directly lead the data science team, set priorities and translate business problems into DS projects.
• Own data pipeline monitoring and observability with quality checks and incident response.
• Provide regular visibility into progress, decisions, and risks to senior leadership.

Skills

Python

Airflow

Kafka

Redshift

Databricks

CI/CD

Data observability

Stakeholder comms

ML lifecycle

Problem solving

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS or Engineering

Tools

GitLab

Job description

Rewards Network is seeking a Data Engineering Lead to drive the modern data engineering foundation while providing technical leadership across data engineering and data science. The team is mid-migration; the role ensures architectural clarity and disciplined execution.

The candidate will act as a hands-on player-coach, building out the competency as a long-term pillar, initially managing the Data Science team and prioritizing work to clear roadblocks in a hybrid in-office role in Chicago.