Lead Data Engineer

American Family Insurance Agency Staff; Englewood (CO); On-site; USD 131,000 - 220,000; Full time

Job summary

American Family Insurance seeks a data engineering leader to architect and drive scalable data pipelines within our big data platform in Englewood, CO. You will lead an engineering team, ensure data quality and security, and collaborate with application architecture and development teams.

The role emphasizes hands-on Python ETL work, GCP, Spark/Hadoop, SQL/NoSQL, and open‑source ML tooling, with opportunities to advance data modeling and operational excellence.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience building data pipelines and platforms.
• Experience with data governance, security and privacy practices.
• Strong SQL/NoSQL knowledge across multiple data stores.

Responsibilities

• Leads an engineering team to meet project deadlines and priorities.
• Supervises data engineering team members and activities.
• Ensures data quality, security, privacy, and integrity across the data lifecycle.
• Documents critical workflows and operational support aspects of team responsibilities.
• Develops deep understanding of data sources, granularity, availability, and limitations.
• Provides proactive technical oversight and advice to architecture and development teams to enable scale and reuse.
• Creates maintainable, scalable code to load and manipulate data in the data warehouse.
• Facilitates communication with project teams and stakeholders.

Skills

GCP

Python

SQL/NoSQL

ETL pipelines

Spark/Hadoop

Machine learning tools

Data modeling

CI/CD

Web services

Infra as code

Tools

Docker

CloudFormation

Terraform

Git

Jenkins

Job description

This position collects, stores, processes and builds applications within our big data platform. Responsible for integrating these applications with the architecture used across the organization.

Position Compensation Range: $131,000.00 - $220,000.00

Pay Rate Type: Salary

Compensation may vary based on the job level and your geographic work location. Relocation support is offered for eligible candidates.

This position has approval to transfer a valid H1 visa.

Primary Accountabilities

• Leads an engineering team to meet project deadlines and priorities.
• Supervises assigned data engineering team members & activities.
• Ensures the quality, completeness, security, privacy, and integrity of data throughout the data lifecycle.
• Documents critical workflows and operational support aspects of team's responsibilities
• Develops deep understanding of data sources, granularity, availability, and limitations.
• Provides proactive technical oversight and advice to application architecture and development teams fostering re-use, design for scale, stability, and operational efficiency of data/analytical solutions.
• Creates maintainable, scalable code to load and manipulate data in the data warehouse.
• Facilitates communication upward and across project teams and business stakeholders.

Specialized Knowledge & Skills Requirements

• Demonstrated experience providing customer-driven solutions, support or service.
• Must have GCP experience for this positon.
• In-depth knowledge of SQL or NoSQL and experience using a variety of data stores (e.g. RDBMS, analytic database, scalable document stores)
• Extensive hands-on Python programming experience, with an emphasis towards building ETL workflows and data-driven solutions.
• Able to employ design patterns and generalize code to address common use cases.
• Capable of authoring robust, high quality, reusable code and contributing to the division's inventory of libraries.
• Expertise in big data batch computing tools (e.g. Hadoop or Spark), with demonstrated experience developing distributed data processing solutions.
• Knowledge of open source machine learning toolkits, such as sklearn, SparkML, or H2O.
• Solid data understanding and business acumen in the data rich industries like insurance or financial
• Applied knowledge of data modeling principles (e.g. dimensional modeling and star schemas).
• Strong understanding of database internals, such as indexes, binary logging, and transactions.
• Experience using tools for infrastructure-as-code (e.g. Docker, CloudFormation, Terraform, etc.)
• Experience with software engineering tools and workflows (i.e. Jenkins, CI/CD, git).
• Practical experience authoring and consuming web services.

Licenses: Not Applicable.

Travel Requirements: Up to 10%.

Physical Requirements: Work that primarily involves sitting/standing.

Working Conditions: Not Applicable.

Additional Information

• To ensure a strong start, all employees participate in our New Employee Orientation during their first week. This experience is held in person at our Madison, WI Headquarters or one of our AmFam core locations to help you connect with our mission, meet key team members and build relationships that support your growth. At times, sessions may be delivered virtually based on scheduling and availability.
• Offer to selected candidate will be made contingent on the results of applicable background checks
• Offer to selected candidate is contingent on signing a non-disclosure agreement for proprietary information, trade secrets, and inventions
• Sponsorship will not be considered for this position unless specified in the posting

We provide benefits that support your physical, emotional, and financial wellbeing. You will have access to comprehensive medical, dental, vision and wellbeing benefits that enable you to take care of your health. We also offer a competitive 401(k) contribution, a pension plan, an annual incentive, 9 paid holidays and a paid time off program (23 days accrued annually for full-time employees). In addition, our student loan repayment program and paid-family leave are available to support our employees and their families. Interns and contingent workers are not eligible for American Family Insurance Group benefits.

We are an equal opportunity employer. It is our policy to comply with all applicable federal, state and local laws pertaining to non-discrimination, non-harassment and equal opportunity. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.

American Family Insurance is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. If a reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please email [e-mail] to request a reasonable accommodation.

#LI-BC2