Data Insights & Analytics Senior Data Engineer (Contract)

AlixPartners; Southfield (MI); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Job summary

AlixPartners seeks an experienced Data Engineer to influence the data platform and drive scalable architectures across Azure, Databricks, Fabric, and the enterprise data lake.

You will help evolve our data governance, enrichment, and AI-enabled workflows while collaborating with IT, analytics teams, and business stakeholders on production-ready solutions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree preferred in a relevant field.
• Minimum three years of data/platform engineering experience.
• Strong experience with Databricks, PySpark, and SQL.
• Knowledge of data governance concepts including catalogs and data quality.
• Experience with modern pipeline/orchestration tools.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and improve scalable data architectures in Azure, Databricks, Fabric, and the data lake.
• Contribute to Unity Catalog governance ensuring data is discoverable and secure.
• Develop resilient ingestion, transformation, and semantic pipelines for reporting and AI use cases.
• Modernize source control, CI/CD, release management, and environment promotion.
• Collaborate with engineers, analysts, QA, architects, and business partners.
• Explore AI-assisted development tools to improve productivity and quality.
• Operate with ownership and a solution-oriented mindset.

Skills

Databricks

PySpark

SQL

Data governance

Data pipelines

Azure

Power BI

Education

Bachelor's degree preferred

Tools

Databricks Unity Catalog

Azure Data Factory

Microsoft Fabric

Power BI

Azure DevOps

ServiceNow

Job description

Location

Southfield, MI

Role

Contract/Hybrid

MUST BE CURRENTLY AUTHORIZED TO WORK IN THE UNITED STATES. NO VISA OR IMMIGRATION SPONSORSHIP FOR THIS ROLE, NOW OR IN THE FUTURE. (e.g., H-1B, STEM OPT, TN, etc.)

What You’ll Do

In this hands-on senior engineering role on the IT Data Insights & Analytics (DIA) team, you will provide significant technical influence across the data platform and work closely with the Data Engineering and Solutions Design leads. While the role does not have direct people management, it requires strong ownership, judgment, and collaboration skills.

You care about doing things well and finding the best solutions - not just checking off boxes. You’re a strong teammate and collaborator with engineers, analysts, QA, IT partners, and business stakeholders. You bring a modern, pragmatic perspective - and a good attitude - to your work. You enjoy improving systems and processes, not just writing code, and are comfortable presenting your ideas and recommendations. You’re curious, open to feedback, and willing to challenge - and be challenged on - technical decisions in pursuit of better outcomes.

The Data Insights & Analytics Senior Data Engineer reports to the Data Insights and Analytics Development Manager. This contract role is in Southfield, MI; remote work may be considered for highly qualified candidates. Paid relocation and benefits are not available for this full-time contract position.

• Design, implement, and continuously improve scalable data architectures in Azure, Databricks, Fabric, and the enterprise data lake.
• Contribute to and evolve our Unity Catalog—based governance model, ensuring data is discoverable, secure, and usable.
• Expand and harden our Data Quality and Validation Framework (including Databricks DQX-style approaches).
• Develop and maintain resilient ingestion, transformation, and semantic pipelines that support both reporting and AI-driven use cases.
• Split time between project work, production support, quality framework enhancements, and “BAU” work (Business as Usual).
• Modernize and maintain source control, CI/CD, release management, and environment promotion strategies.
• Partner with internal teams building “ask your data” experiences, analytics copilots, and AI-enabled applications, helping them move from proof-of-concept to enterprise‑ready solutions.
• Help define patterns for safely exposing approved corporate data to business and technical partners for experimentation and production use.
• Actively explore and apply AI-assisted development tools to improve productivity, code quality, documentation, and design decisions.
• Champion automation-first, validation-first, and “shift-left” engineering and testing practices.
• Proactively identify opportunities for platform modernization and process improvement, and clearly articulate recommendations for implementation.
• Collaborate with other engineers, analysts, QA, architects, and business partners and share knowledge
• Challenge assumptions thoughtfully and respectfully when there’s a better way forward.
• Operate with ownership, accountability, and a positive, solution-oriented attitude.
• Additional responsibilities as identified. This description is not designed to encompass a comprehensive listing of required activities, duties, or responsibilities.

What You’ll Bring

• Bachelor’s degree preferred.
• Minimum three (3) years of relevant data/platform engineering experience (we value depth and mindset more than exact years).
• Strong experience with Databricks (including Unity Catalog), PySpark, and SQL.
• Working knowledge of data governance concepts including catalogs, lineage, access controls and data quality.
• Experience orchestrating data workloads using modern pipeline/orchestration tools (e.g., Databricks Workflows, Azure Data Factory, or equivalent).
• Experience with Star/Snowflake schema data warehouses, utilizing slowly changing dimensions.
• Experience with Microsoft Fabric and Power BI.
• Knowledge of other Microsoft platforms such as Power Apps, Dataverse, and SharePoint
• Comfort using AI tools as a part of daily work (e.g., code assistance, solution exploration, documentation, analysis), to improve speed, quality, and decision making.
• Familiar with Azure DevOps and ServiceNow.
• Experience building and maintaining source control processes, environment management, and CI/CD deployment pipelines and processes for data platforms.
• Experience in a 24x7 service delivery model supporting mission-critical business operations.
• Demonstrated interpersonal skills; proven ability to work effectively with various personnel styles; ability to effectively convey and obtain buy-in for holistic strategies at all levels and functions in the organization.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English, with the ability to deliver clear, concise, and executive-ready messaging.
• Core working hours are generally 8:30 AM – 5:30 PM, Monday - Friday; willingness to work outside of normal U.S. business hours, and as unique projects/needs arise.
• Ability to work full time in an office and remote environment; physically able to sit/stand at a computer and work in front of a computer screen for significant portions of the workday.
• Must become familiar with, and promote and abide by, our Core Values as defined by the AlixPartners’ Code of Conduct and foster an inclusive environment with people at all levels of an organization.

AlixPartners has embraced a hybrid work model to provide flexibility and support our employees’ work-life integration. Our hybrid model combines a mix of in-person at an AlixPartners office on Tuesday, Wednesday, & Thursday, and remote working options for Monday and Friday.

AlixPartners is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to, among other things, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, status as a protected veteran, or disability. AlixPartners is a proud Gold-level award-winning Veteran Friendly Employer.