Staff Data Engineer

Cityblock Health; United States; On-site; USD 153,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Life insurance

Retirement benefits

Equity program

Paid time off

Job summary

Cityblock Health seeks a senior data engineer to own the data pipeline and semantic layer powering value-based care analytics. You will work in a dbt Mesh on BigQuery (GCP) with Dagster orchestration, handling claims, enrollment, EHR, and HIE data to feed reliable downstream metrics.

You’ll enable self-serve analytics for BI, clinical, and product teams, ensure data quality, and design scalable AI-assisted decision systems with governance that meets HIPAA requirements.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience as an engineer who builds trustworthy systems.
• Hands-on experience with dbt and SQL at production scale including orchestration with Dagster, Airflow, or equivalent.
• Experience owning operational or reverse-ETL data systems that other applications depend on in production.
• Experience designing or maintaining a semantic layer or a metrics layer.
• Understanding of how LLMs consume structured context and fluent daily use of AI assistants tooling for engineering and data analytics.
• Ability to scale AI adoption to accelerate collaborative work with peers.
• Drawn to mission-oriented work and comfortable partnering with BI, clinical, and product stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Own major parts of the foundation for scalable data analytics and AI-ready pipelines.
• Build and maintain ingest and transformation systems from raw partner data to a trusted semantic layer.
• Define and maintain the semantic and metrics layer for consistent definitions across dashboards.
• Provide self-serve analytics enabling stakeholders to answer questions independently.
• Collaborate with BI, clinical, and product teams to align data definitions with business reasoning.

Skills

dbt

SQL

Dagster

Airflow

Reverse-ETL

Semantic layer

LLM tooling

AI adoption

Stakeholder collaboration

Education

CS degree or equivalent

Tools

BigQuery

Claude

Cursor

Codex

Job description

Job Description: About the role

Cityblock delivers value-based care to individuals with complex needs with a particular focus on Medicaid beneficiaries and those who are dually eligible, people the healthcare system has historically underserved. Increasingly, whether a care or operational decision drives a positive outcome depends on whether a human or an AI agent can reason correctly over our data. This role owns major parts of the foundation that makes that possible. You'll take ownership across our data pipeline that will be leveraged at scale to enable people and models to arrive at the same answers that drive the care our members receive. You'll work in a dbt Mesh on BigQuery (GCP), with ingestion orchestrated through Dagster. The data you handle spans claims (medical and pharmacy), eligibility and enrollment rosters, EHR data, and HIE/FHIR feeds. You’ll work with data from our internally developed care management platform, vendor systems, and pull that data through to our semantic layer. You will treat data quality as the product Across operational data systems You'll improve the quality of member identity and eligibility data that determines who is an active member and gates every downstream clinical and financial workflow. Build and maintain the ingest and transformation systems that turn raw partner data into something dependable, from correctness through freshness to reliability. Own the reverse-ETL layer that feeds the operational data that directly impacts the efficiency and effectiveness of the execution of Cityblock's care model. Support clinical performance evaluation and value-based contracts through a quality measurement pipeline that produces HEDIS and Stars metrics Across the semantic and metrics layer Define and maintain the semantic and metrics layer so each metric has one correct definition, applied consistently across every dashboard and every consumer. Make metrics machine-readable and well-constrained, so an AI agent querying them gets a correct answer because the layer bounds what it can conclude. Build self-serve analytics so stakeholders can answer their own questions against definitions they can trust. Across teams Feed the Applied AI product work the grounded, trustworthy context its features depend on. Partner with BI and clinical stakeholders so the definitions in the semantic layer match how the business actually reasons about itself. Work with the platform team so agents query your data through governed, well-understood paths.

Requirements for the role

• 6+ years of experience as an engineer who builds trustworthy systems.
• Hands-on experience with dbt and SQL at production scale including orchestration with Dagster, Airflow, or equivalent.
• Experience owning operational or reverse-ETL data systems that other applications depend on in production.
• Experience designing or maintaining a semantic layer or a metrics layer.
• An understanding of how LLMs consume structured context and fluent daily use of AI assistants tooling (Claude, Cursor, Codex, or equivalent) for engineering and within data analytics.
• A demonstrated ability to scale AI adoption to accelerate collaborative work with your peers.
• Drawn to mission-oriented work, and comfortable partnering with BI, clinical, and product stakeholders whose expertise differs from yours.

Nice to have, but not required

• A CS degree or equivalent.
• Prior work in a regulated or compliance-heavy environment (HIPAA, SOC 2, or similar).
• Direct experience in BigQuery.
• Exposure to healthcare and clinical data, including ADT, HEDIS, CMS Stars.
• Experience building self-serve analytics adopted by non-technical stakeholders.

How we define success

Operational data is correct, fresh, and reliable, and the systems that depend on it trust it without manual checks. We can rely on our AI systems to leverage data correctly. Stakeholders increasingly answer their own questions through self-serve analytics.

Benefits

• Health insurance
• Life insurance
• Retirement benefits
• Participation in the company’s equity program
• Paid time off, including vacation and sick leave
• The expected salary range for this position is: $153,000.00 - $210,000.00 Annual

The actual offer will be at the company’s sole discretion and determined by relevant business considerations, including the final candidate’s qualifications, years of experience, skillset, and geographic location.

Cityblock values diversity as a core tenet of the work we do and the populations we serve.

We are an equal opportunity employer, indiscriminate of race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, citizenship, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or any other protected characteristic.

We do not accept unsolicited resumes from outside recruiters/placement agencies.

Cityblock will not pay fees associated with resumes presented through unsolicited means.

Cityblock Health is the first tech-driven provider for communities with complex needs - bringing better care to where it's needed most, block by block.

Founded in 2017 on the premise that "health is local" and based in Brooklyn, we are backed by Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs along with some of the top healthcare investors in the country. Our mission is to improve the health of underserved communities. Importantly, our solutions are designed specifically for Medicaid and lower-income Medicare beneficiaries, and we meet our members where they are, bringing care into the home and neighborhoods through our community-based care teams and Virtual Care offerings. In close collaboration with community-based organizations, local providers, and leading health plans, we are reorganizing the health system to focus on what matters to our members. Equipped with world-class, custom care delivery technology, we deliver personalized primary care, behavioral health, and social services to deliver a radically better experience of care for every member and community we serve. Over the next year, we’ll grow quickly to bring better care to many more members and their communities. To do this, we need people who, like us, believe that everyone should have good care for what matters to them, in their community. Our work is grounded in a belief in the power of a diverse community. To close gaps in care and advance equity in the communities we serve, we have to start with making our own team diverse and inclusive. Our ways of working are characterized by creativity, collaboration, and mutual learning that comes from bringing together a community from diverse backgrounds and perspectives. We strive to ensure that every person on the Cityblock team, and every Cityblock member, feels supported and included as a part of our community.

Our Values

• Aim for Understanding
• Be All In
• Bring Your Whole Self
• Lean Into Discomfort
• Put Members First

About our Team

We employ a field-based, home-based care model and are committed to meeting members where they are-in their homes, in their community, and in our Hubs. We will go above and beyond to connect with Cityblock members in a non-judgmental, respectful and empathic manner, to meet their needs, and to provide feedback to the system as a part of our community.