Senior Data Engineer: Lakehouse & AI-Ready Pipelines

fairlife LLC; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 110,000 - 125,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical coverage

Parental leave

401(k) match

Wellness reimbursement

Tuition reimbursement

Employee discounts

Job summary

fairlife, LLC in Chicago, IL seeks a Sr. Data Engineer to design, build, and operate data pipelines and lakehouse models, transforming enterprise and factory data into analytics-ready products. You will craft reusable Python libraries and end-to-end data platforms supporting AI-ready capabilities.

You will collaborate with stakeholders across manufacturing and business functions, ensuring robust data governance, security, and cost efficiency while advancing the DI ecosystem.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or related field; 5+ years of data engineering experience.
• Expert-level SQL and strong Python; Spark/PySpark for large-scale transformation.
• Strong data warehousing and dimensional modeling (star schemas, Kimball).
• Proficiency with Azure data services including SQL DBs, Event Hubs, Functions, Data Factory, Key Vault, and Entra.
• Experience with Azure DevOps or similar: Git, YAML CI/CD, artifact management, code reviews.
• Lakehouse experience (Delta Lake, medallion architecture) in Fabric or Databricks preferred.
• Working knowledge of KQL is a plus; exposure to RAG/semantic search a plus.
• Experience with manufacturing/factory data (MES, historians, IIoT streaming) a plus.
• Excellent communication skills, comfortable with non-technical stakeholders.
• Detail-oriented self-starter with growth mindset; capable of handling ambiguity.
• Team player, documentation and sharing culture.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and operationalize batch and streaming data pipelines that integrate enterprise and factory data sources into lakehouses.
• Support development and maintenance of dimensional data models (star schemas) that deliver well-governed metrics.
• Build reusable Python libraries (ingestion, incremental loads, telemetry, alerting).
• Own the engineering lifecycle end to end: Git branching, PRs, CI/CD in Azure DevOps, automated testing, environment promotion.
• Monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize solutions for reliability, performance, and cost; embed data quality validation and observability.
• Embed security and governance: identity-based authentication, secret management, access control, handling of sensitive data.
• Contribute to AI-facing platform capabilities: semantic search indexes, AI-ready data interfaces, agent tooling.
• Partner with stakeholders across manufacturing and business functions; translate needs into designs and communicate to non-technical audiences.
• Document, share, and support the technical growth of fellow team members.

Skills

SQL

Python

Spark

Data Modeling

Azure

DevOps

Delta Lake

KQL

RAG

MES

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Tools

Azure Data Factory

Databricks

Delta Lake

Job description

fairlife, LLC in Chicago, IL seeks a Sr. Data Engineer to design, build, and operate data pipelines and lakehouse models, transforming enterprise and factory data into analytics-ready products. You will craft reusable Python libraries and end-to-end data platforms supporting AI-ready capabilities.

You will collaborate with stakeholders across manufacturing and business functions, ensuring robust data governance, security, and cost efficiency while advancing the DI ecosystem.