Senior Data Platform Engineer – Public Sector

City and County of San Francisco; San Francisco, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 160,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

City and County of San Francisco is seeking a principal data engineer to lead DataSF's department-facing platform. You will own engagement lifecycles, define service catalogs, and translate departmental needs into scalable data services and pipelines.

You’ll drive dbt modeling, data quality, governance, and self-service access while mentoring engineers and aligning with the City’s mission to deliver transparent, equitable public data infrastructure.

Qualifications

• Strong hands-on data platform or data engineering background with pipelines and data modeling.
• Analytics engineering depth in dbt, semantic modeling, or similar.
• Cloud data warehouse experience (Snowflake preferred) and advanced SQL.
• Data governance, privacy, or security awareness for sensitive data.
• Ability to onboard, enable, train, and drive platform adoption with stakeholders.
• Experience mentoring engineers or analysts and raising team standards.
• Genuine interest in public-sector impact and ethical data use.

Responsibilities

• Own the full department engagement lifecycle from initial conversation to onboarding and delivery.
• Define and publish the DataSF service catalog with measurable criteria.
• Partner with departments to model data domains and translate needs into platform features.
• Shape analytics engineering practice including dbt models, pipelines, and data quality standards.
• Build self-service pathways for departments to discover data and request access.
• Maintain data quality and lineage signals so users understand data assumptions.
• Integrate governance and data-readiness requirements into onboarding.
• Set clear scope expectations with departments and perform related duties.

Skills

Data platform engineering

Data modeling

dbt models

SQL

Snowflake

Governance & security awareness

Stakeholder enablement

Mentoring engineers/analysts

Public-sector data experience

Education

Associate degree in CS/Engineering/IS or related field

60+ semester credits / 90 quarter credits with relevant coursework

One year of additional experience may substitute for degree

1010 Information Systems Trainee Program substitution

Tools

dbt

Airflow

SQL tooling

Snowflake

Job description

City and County of San Francisco is seeking a principal data engineer to lead DataSF's department-facing platform. You will own engagement lifecycles, define service catalogs, and translate departmental needs into scalable data services and pipelines.

You’ll drive dbt modeling, data quality, governance, and self-service access while mentoring engineers and aligning with the City’s mission to deliver transparent, equitable public data infrastructure.