Hybrid Data Engineering Lead (Chicago)

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

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid office near Metra stations

Catered lunches on Tuesdays

Health benefits

Job summary

Rewards Network is seeking a Data Engineering Lead to drive the modern data engineering foundation and provide technical leadership across data engineering and data science. The role is hands-on, with team-building responsibilities, and sits in a mid-migration environment building a modern stack.

The position is hybrid, requiring in-office presence in Chicago three days a week (Tue–Thu). You’ll lead ELT pipelines, data modeling, and observability while mentoring engineers and coordinating with

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• 6–10 years of experience in data engineering or related field.
• 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 including model design, testing strategy, and layer boundary governance.
• Experience designing and enforcing data modeling standards in a team environment.

Responsibilities

• Establish and enforce architecture standards ensuring consistent design and repeatable results.
• Assess current data infrastructure and plan refactor/replace initiatives.
• Lead the build-out of the modern data stack including ELT pipelines and streaming ingestion.
• Hire and develop data engineering talent; mentor and review code.
• Define and maintain data model RFC processes and prevent undocumented changes.
• Direct the data science team; set priorities and manage workstreams.
• Own data pipeline monitoring and observability with alerts and data quality checks.
• Provide regular visibility into progress, decisions, and risks to senior leadership.

Skills

Python

Airflow

Kafka

Data Modeling

Observability

CI/CD

Team Leadership

Education

B.S./B.E. in CS/Engineering

Advanced degree preferred

Tools

GitLab

Redshift

BigQuery

Databricks

Job description

Rewards Network is seeking a Data Engineering Lead to drive the modern data engineering foundation and provide technical leadership across data engineering and data science. The role is hands-on, with team-building responsibilities, and sits in a mid-migration environment building a modern stack.

The position is hybrid, requiring in-office presence in Chicago three days a week (Tue–Thu). You’ll lead ELT pipelines, data modeling, and observability while mentoring engineers and coordinating with