Sr. Data Engineer, Payment Operations

Zelis; Creve Coeur (MO); Hybrid; USD 127,000 - 161,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401k match

Flexible PTO

Health benefits

Job summary

Zelis, headquartered in the United States, is hiring a Senior Data Engineer to lead Snowflake-based data pipelines supporting Payment Operations monitoring. The role involves designing, building, and maintaining data infrastructure, and guiding teams to improve data literacy and governance across platforms.

The position emphasizes technical leadership, architecture documentation, and scalable data solutions, with hybrid in-office/work-from-home flexibility and a base salary range of

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent professional experience in a technical field.
• 7 years of data engineering experience, including 3+ years in production Snowflake environments.
• Expert SQL, including recursive CTEs, stored procedures, and large-scale performance tuning.
• Experience with Snowflake-native patterns (Snowpipe, streams and tasks, clustering, virtual warehouses).
• Experience building production data pipelines with monitoring and data quality controls.
• Experience with enterprise job schedulers like Automic, Airflow, or dbt Cloud.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, deploy, and maintain Snowflake tables and pipelines for payment monitoring.
• Develop stored procedures and delay thresholds with web- and business-day-aware timing.
• Maintain KPI infrastructure and cross-platform reporting pipelines.
• Establish data quality controls and definitional consistency across data sources.
• Lead sessions with onshore/offshore partners to promote SQL/Snowflake proficiency.
• Document data architecture, data flows, and runbooks for maintainability.
• Translate monitoring needs into scalable technical solutions for operations leaders.

Skills

SQL proficiency

Snowflake

Data pipelines

Data quality controls

Technical leadership

Documentation

Python

Education

Bachelor's degree or higher in CS/IS/Data Engineering

Tools

Snowflake

Snowpipe

Airflow

dbt Cloud

Automic

Looker

Hex

Job description

At Zelis, we Get Stuff Done. So, let’s get to it!

A Little About Us

Zelis is modernizing the healthcare financial experience across payers, providers, and healthcare consumers. We serve more than 750 payers, including the top five national health plans, regional health plans, TPAs and millions of healthcare providers and consumers across our platform of solutions. Zelis sees across the system to identify, optimize, and solve problems holistically with technology built by healthcare experts – driving real, measurable results for clients.

At Zelis, AI is woven into the fabric of how we work. Every associate is expected - and empowered - to partner with AI to challenge the status quo, accelerate innovation, and amplify their impact. This is a place for builders with a growth mindset who act with agility, embrace change, and use modern technology to shape smarter solutions, exceptional experiences, and the future of our industry for our clients, customers, and our culture.

A Little About You

You bring a unique blend of personality and professional expertise to your work, inspiring others with your passion and dedication. Your career is a testament to your diverse experiences, community involvement, and the valuable lessons you've learned along the way. You are more than just your resume; you are a reflection of your achievements, the knowledge you've gained, and the personal interests that shape who you are.

Position Overview

The Senior Data Engineer leads the engineering workstreams that underpin the Payment Operations monitoring transformation program at Zelis. This role designs, builds, and maintains Snowflake data pipelines; activates payment monitoring scenarios; and delivers the KPI infrastructure used for executive reporting across multiple platforms. As the primary Snowflake subject matter expert for Payment Operations, the role also strengthens data literacy, documents the data architecture, and provides technical guidance that enables the broader operations organization to use data more independently.

Key Responsibilities

• Payment Monitoring Engineering: Design, build, deploy, and maintain Snowflake tables and pipelines that support payment monitoring. Develop stored procedures, status-specific delay thresholds, business-day-aware timing windows, and root cause diagnostic tagging. Maintain the combined platform monitoring table that supports top-down alerting across the full payment lifecycle.
• Monitoring Scenario Activation: Execute activation of inactive monitoring scenarios in sequenced sprints with prioritization based on cost, risk, and revenue exposure.
• KPI Infrastructure: Design and maintain the Payment Lifecycle KPI calculation pipeline, including query logic, data joins across tables and source payment records, and automated refresh cadence — with slicing by any required dimension such as platform, payer, and payment modality.
• Data Quality Management: Establish and maintain data quality controls within payment pipelines, including forward-fill logic, export grouping, source system column validation, and definitional consistency checks between payment-related data sources.
• Technical Leadership and Enablement: Serve as the primary Snowflake subject matter expert for Payment Operations. Lead working sessions with onshore and offshore partners to build practical SQL and Snowflake proficiency, review technical approaches, and promote maintainable engineering practices.
• Architecture and Documentation: Document the Payment Operations data architecture, including platform schemas, table structures, data flows, dependencies, stored procedures, operational runbooks, and monitoring logic to ensure knowledge is accurate, transferable, and sustainable.
• Cross-Functional Partnership: Translate business monitoring needs into scalable technical solutions and communicate technical findings, risks, tradeoffs, and recommendations in clear language to operations leaders and non-technical stakeholders.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Engineering, or a related technical field; or equivalent professional experience in lieu of degree.
• 7 years of experience in data engineering, with at least 3 years in production Snowflake environments.
• Expert SQL proficiency, including recursive common table expressions, stored procedures, and performance tuning on large-scale datasets.
• Hands-on experience with Snowflake-native patterns, including Snowpipe, streams and tasks, clustering, and virtual warehouse configuration.
• Demonstrated ability to absorb an unfamiliar data architecture quickly — reading existing schemas, reverse-engineering legacy stored procedures, and mapping undocumented data flows.
• Experience building and supporting production data pipelines, monitoring workflows, automated batch processes, and data quality controls.
• Experience with enterprise job scheduling tools such as Automic, Airflow, or dbt Cloud for managing production batch workloads.

Please note at this time we are unable to proceed with candidates who require visa sponsorship now or in the future.

Preferred Skills

• Experience working as an embedded data engineer within a business operations team, with the ability to translate technical work into plain language for non-technical colleagues.
• Comfort working with AI tools and applying them to accelerate data engineering workflows, analysis, and documentation.
• Experience in healthcare payment processing, including ACH, EDI 835 delivery, virtual card (VCC or VRA), or provider payment disbursement workflows.
• Familiarity with SIGMA or equivalent cloud-native BI platforms (Looker, Hex, or similar) connected to a Snowflake backend.
• Exposure to HIPAA-compliant data handling practices and healthcare data governance frameworks.
• Experience conducting peer reviews of Python, SQL or pipeline code in a cross-functional setting.
• Snowflake SnowPro Core or Advanced certification.

Location and Workplace Flexibility

Zelis is headquartered in the U.S., with multiple locations across the country and in Hyderabad, India. Check out our locations to learn more about our offices. All employee work locations are based on the needs of the position and are determined by the Leadership team. In-office work and activities vary based on work and team objectives in accordance with Company policies.

While location expectations vary by role, candidates within approximately 50 miles of a U.S. office are generally preferred to support collaboration when needed. Our hybrid approach is flexible, and in-office presence is guided by team and business needs rather than a fixed weekly schedule.

Base Salary Range

$127,000.00 - $160,550.00

At Zelis we are committed to providing fair and equitable compensation packages. The base salary range allows us to make an offer that considers multiple individualized factors, including experience, education, qualifications, as well as job-related and industry-related knowledge and skills, etc. Base pay is just one part of our Total Rewards package, which may also include discretionary bonus plans, commissions, or other incentives depending on the role.

Zelis’ full-time associates are eligible for a highly competitive benefits package as well, which demonstrates our commitment to our employees’ health, well-being, and financial protection. The US-based benefits include a 401k plan with employer match, flexible paid time off, holidays, parental leaves, life and disability insurance, and health benefits including medical, dental, vision, and prescription drug coverage.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Zelis is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet 100% of the qualifications for the role. We believe in the value of diverse perspectives and experiences and are committed to building an inclusive workplace for all.

Accessibility Support

We are dedicated to ensuring our application process is accessible to all candidates. If you are a qualified individual with a disability or a disabled veteran and require a reasonable accommodation with any part of the application and/or interview process, please email [e-mail].

Disclaimer

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by people assigned to this classification. They are not to be construed as an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, and skills required of personnel so classified. All personnel may be required to perform duties outside of their normal responsibilities, duties, and skills from time to time.