Data Engineering Manager: Lead Data Transformation Team

LILT AI; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

LILT is seeking a hands-on Data Platform Lead to own the transformation layer (dbt) and warehouse, ensuring consistent metric definitions across Finance, Operations, Production, and Product. You will lead a new Data sub-team in Platform Engineering, hire a Data Engineer and a Senior Data Scientist, and set the charter, governance, and cost controls while remaining hands-on with SQL, dbt, and Python.

The role emphasizes agentic AI practices, cloud and self-hosted analytics, and building scalable

Qualifications

• 7+ years in data/analytics engineering.
• 2+ years managing a small team (2-5).
• Fluent in SQL and Python; built production pipelines.
• Experience with a dbt-like transformation layer.
• Cost management for warehouse/pipelines; budget ownership.

Responsibilities

• Own the data layer across metrics definitions in dbt.
• Run the transformation layer and manage warehouse cost.
• Set direction for warehouse strategy and API exposure.
• Build and lead the Data Engineer and Senior Data Scientist hires.
• Define AI agentic engineering practices for data pipelines.
• Stay hands-on: review and write SQL, dbt, and Python.

Skills

SQL

Python

Team leadership

Stakeholder management

BI metrics

Tools

dbt

BigQuery

ClickHouse

Snowflake

Kubernetes

Job description

LILT is seeking a hands-on Data Platform Lead to own the transformation layer (dbt) and warehouse, ensuring consistent metric definitions across Finance, Operations, Production, and Product. You will lead a new Data sub-team in Platform Engineering, hire a Data Engineer and a Senior Data Scientist, and set the charter, governance, and cost controls while remaining hands-on with SQL, dbt, and Python.

The role emphasizes agentic AI practices, cloud and self-hosted analytics, and building scalable