Director, Analytics & Semantic Layer

Clayco; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Discretionary Annual Bonus

Comprehensive Benefits Package

Job summary

Clayco is building a data and AI organization with a central semantic layer. You will define what Clayco numbers mean, create governed models, and lead the analytics engineering team as it grows to eleven.

The role involves collaboration with data platform, AI product teams, and governance to ensure definitional consistency across finance,项目 controls, and job-site needs. The position requires experience building a semantic layer in Snowflake/dbt, knowledge of AEC contexts, and the ability to

Qualifications

• Built a semantic layer in Snowflake/dbt at scale with definitional consistency.
• Experience in construction/architecture/engineering contexts (AEC).
• Led analytics engineers, hiring, performance, and standards.
• Ability to reconcile finance and operations definitions and drive consensus.

Responsibilities

• Own Clayco's semantic layer, its definitions, models, approvals, versioning, and retirement.
• Build core conformed models: project, cost code, vendor, contract, schedule activity.
• Stand up domain models for finance, WIP, project controls, safety and risk.
• Hire and lead analytics engineering team and grow from 2 to 11.
• Manage retirement of legacy reporting onto governed models.
• Collaborate with data platform, AI products, and governance teams on layer boundaries.

Skills

Semantic layer

Snowflake/dbt

AEC domain knowledge

Analytics leadership

Stakeholder alignment

Tools

Procore

Job description

About Us

Clayco is a full-service, turnkey real estate development, master planning, architecture, engineering, and construction firm that safely delivers clients across North America the highest quality solutions on time, on budget, and above and beyond expectations. With $8.1 billion in revenue for 2025, Clayco specializes in the \"art and science of building,\" providing fast track, efficient solutions for mission critical, industrial, life sciences, power & energy, aviation, commercial, institutional, residential and sports & entertainment related building projects.

The Role We Want You For

Clayco is building a data and AI organization from the ground up, and the semantic layer sits at the center of it. We are looking for the person who will own it.

We run a Snowflake-based platform that has to answer questions about billions of dollars of construction work: what a project costs to complete, where a schedule is slipping, whether a trade package is trending over. The hard part is not the pipelines. It is that cost to complete means one thing in finance, another in project controls, and a third on the job site — and until someone settles that, no dashboard and no AI agent can be trusted.

That is this job. You will define what a Clayco number means, build the governed models behind it, and lead the analytics engineering team that grows to eleven people over the next two years.

Most semantic layer roles are maintenance jobs on someone else's architecture. This one is a build. The strategy is set and funded, the executive sponsorship is real, and a dozen agents are already running on semantic models we have built. There are hundreds more to come, and you will set the standard they follow rather than inherit one.

Specific Responsibilities

• Own Clayco's semantic layer, the certified definitions, the models behind them, and the process by which a definition gets approved, versioned, and retired.


• Build the core conformed models: project, cost code, vendor, contract, schedule activity.


• Stand up domain models for finance and WIP, project controls, and safety and risk.


• Hire and lead the analytics engineering team, growing from two to eleven.


• Own the schedule for retiring our legacy reporting estate onto governed models.


• Partner with our data platform, AI products, and governance leads on where your layer starts and stops.

Job Requirements and Competencies

• You have built a semantic layer before. Not dashboards on top of one — the layer itself, in Snowflake, dbt, or equivalent, at a scale where definitional consistency was a real problem you had to solve.


• You know AEC. You have worked in construction, engineering, or architecture, or you studied it. You know what a schedule of values is, why percentage-of-completion accounting is contentious, and what a superintendent actually needs to see. We are not going to teach this.


• You have led analytics engineers. Hiring, performance, and setting standards. We would like to hear about a team you grew rather than inherited, but leading one well matters more to us than how much it grew.


• You can hold your ground with the business. Half this job is telling a finance executive and an operations executive that they cannot both be right, and getting them to a shared definition anyway.


• You bring outside perspective. We have made real architectural decisions and we are not looking for someone to ratify them. Bring ideas from wherever you have been, make them work with what already exists, and push us to change what should change when you can show the benefit.


• Nice to have: metric certification under audit, experience retiring a legacy BI estate, Procore or similar project systems.


• Not required: AI or machine learning background. That work lives elsewhere on the team.

Some Things You Should Know

• Our clients and projects are nationwide – Travel will be required.


• No other builder can offer the collaborative design-build approach that Clayco does.


• We work on creative, complex, award-winning, high-profile jobs.


• The pace is fast!


• This position is classified as a safety-sensitive role in accordance with applicable state and federal laws. Candidates selected for this position will be subject to a comprehensive background check, which includes mandatory drug testing.

Why Clayco?

• 2025 Best Places to Work – St. Louis Business Journal, Los Angeles Business Journal, and Phoenix Business Journal.


• 2025 ENR Top 400 – Top Data Center Contractor (Top 3).


• 2025 ENR Top 100 Design-Build Firms – Design-Build Contractor (Top 5).


• 2025 ENR Top 100 Green Contractors – Green Contractor (Top 3).

Benefits

• Discretionary Annual Bonus: Subject to company and individual performance.


• Comprehensive Benefits Package Including: Medical, dental and vision plans, 401k, generous PTO and paid company holidays, employee assistance program, flexible spending accounts, life insurance, disability coverage, learning & development programs and more!

Compensation

• The salary range for this position considers a wide range of factors in making compensation decisions including but not limited to: Education, qualifications, skills, training, experience, certifications, internal equity, and location. It is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for the role and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. The Clayco Nationwide salary range for this position is approximately $180,000 - $230,000 +/- annually (not adjusted for location).