Manager, Analytics Engineering

Forward Financing; United States; On-site; USD 170,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible time-off policy

401k match

Paid parental leave

Wellness reimbursement

Job summary

Forward Financing is seeking a Manager, Analytics Engineering to lead a high-performing team in building a centralized, AI-ready data foundation. This hands-on leadership role involves setting technical direction, shipping code, and partnering with multiple departments to craft trusted data products.

Ideal candidates will possess a solid background in Analytics Engineering with strong SQL skills and at least 7 years of experience, alongside proven people management capabilities. The role offers competitive compensation and a rich total rewards package.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in Analytics Engineering, Data Engineering, or Business Intelligence.
• 2+ years of people management experience.
• Deep hands-on expertise with dbt and a cloud data warehouse.
• Experience designing and operating a semantic or metrics layer.
• Excellent communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of Analytics Engineers.
• Write and review SQL/dbt code, and drive technical design.
• Own the roadmap for your team’s portion of the analytics platform.
• Drive data centralization by partnering with stakeholders.
• Champion data quality, governance, and observability.

Skills

SQL

Dimensional modeling

Leadership

Data quality

Communication skills

Education

7+ years in Analytics/Data Engineering

Tools

dbt

Snowflake

CI/CD practices

Job description

The Analytics Engineering team at Forward plays a central role in our Data ecosystem, partnering with technical and business stakeholders to convert raw data into trusted, AI‑ready insights. Our team builds and optimizes data infrastructure, designs the data models and semantic layer that power Forward’s source of truth, and develops the pipelines that fuel business intelligence, advanced analytics, predictive modeling, and the next generation of AI‑driven experiences at the company.

We are seeking a Manager, Analytics Engineering to lead and grow a high‑performing team of Lead and Senior Analytics Engineers and to take ownership of one of Forward’s most strategic bets: building a centralized, AI‑ready data foundation. This is a hands‑on leadership role. You will set technical direction for a critical portion of our data platform, ship code alongside your team, and drive the build‑out of our semantic layer so that a single source of truth powers our dashboards, models, and the next generation of AI experiences – including Snowflake Intelligence and other agent‑based capabilities leadership is investing in.

You’ll partner with stakeholders across Sales, Underwriting, Account Servicing, Finance, Risk, and Product to turn complex business problems into trusted, scalable data products. Reporting to the Senior Manager of Analytics Engineering, you’ll be a key partner in evolving how Forward delivers insight – and intelligence – at scale.

In This Role You Will

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of Lead and Senior Analytics Engineers – driving career growth, performance and a high‑trust team culture.
• Stay deeply hands‑on: write and review SQL/dbt code, drive technical design, and uphold a high bar for craftsmanship, testing and documentation across our Snowflake + dbt stack.
• Own the roadmap for your team’s portion of the analytics platform – prioritizing work that drives the most business impact and balancing delivery, quality and technical debt.
• Drive Forward’s data centralization vision by partnering with Business Intelligence and wider Analytics group to design and deliver scalable data models, marts, and a reliable semantic layer that serves as the company’s single source of truth.
• Lead the build‑out of our semantic layer and metrics standards so key business KPIs are defined once, governed clearly, and consumed consistently across dashboards, models, AI agents, and downstream products.
• Translate ambiguous business problems from leadership and cross‑functional stakeholders into well‑scoped technical solutions, communicating trade‑offs clearly to both technical and non‑technical audiences.
• Champion data quality, observability, and governance – including testing, lineage, cataloging, and incident response – so stakeholders can trust the numbers.
• Drive technical excellence in our dbt project: model architecture, performance tuning, incremental strategies and CI/CD practices that scale as data volume and team size grow.
• Help shape our hiring bar – recruit, interview and onboard exceptional Analytics Engineers as the team continues to grow.

Role Requirements

• (Even if you don’t check every box but see yourself contributing, please apply.)
• 7+ years of experience in Analytics Engineering, Data Engineering, or Business Intelligence with a strong foundation in SQL and dimensional/data modeling.
• 2+ years of people management experience leading senior individual contributors, including driving performance and career development.
• Deep hands‑on expertise with dbt and a cloud data warehouse (Snowflake strongly preferred), including incremental models, testing strategies, and macros.
• Demonstrated experience designing and operating a semantic or metrics layer that serves as a trusted source of truth across an organization.
• Track record of partnering directly with senior cross‑functional leaders (Finance, Risk, Operations, Product, etc.) to translate business problems into durable data products.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills – able to make complex technical decisions accessible to executives and non‑technical partners.
• Proven ability to coach engineers, raise the technical bar, and deliver consistently against an ambitious roadmap.

Nice to Have

• Experience integrating AI or LLM‑based capabilities into the analytics stack (e.g., Snowflake Intelligence).
• Experience in fintech, lending, or another regulated, data‑intensive industry.
• Experience with streaming data or CDC pipelines (Streamkap, Fivetran, or similar) and real‑time analytics use cases.
• Familiarity with BI tools such as Tableau, Looker, or similar.
• Python proficiency for data transformations or workflow tooling.

Compensation

Annual Targeted Salary: $170,000-$200,000 USD

Annual Target Bonus: 12%

At Forward Financing, we’re committed to fair and transparent compensation. We believe in providing a compensation package that recognizes your skills, experience, and the unique value you bring to our team. We take a market‑based approach to pay, regularly reviewing benchmark data to ensure our compensation remains competitive, equitable, and aligned with our performance‑driven culture.

Final offers are determined by a variety of factors, including the candidate’s qualifications, relevant experience, specific skills, and internal equity. This approach ensures that our compensation is competitive and equitable. Your recruiter will provide specific details on the expected base and variable earnings as it pertains to this specific role.

Total Rewards

Additionally, we offer a comprehensive total rewards package, including but not limited to: medical, dental, vision, commuter benefits, a flexible time‑off policy, paid parental leave, 401k match for US employees, wellness reimbursement, volunteering days, annual professional development budget, and charitable donation match.

Forward is proud to be a remote‑first company, keeping workplace flexibility a top priority for our employees. As a business, we are focused on impact; we are more concerned with your contributions to the success of the company than where you get your work done. To help facilitate in‑person collaboration, employees are welcome to work from one of our premiere office locations.

When we aren’t collaborating to drive business and support our customers, we’re finding virtual and in‑person ways to get to know our colleagues, celebrate team wins, and have fun together!