Houston, TX (Hybrid)
Contract-to-Hire (C2H)
Hybrid – 3 days onsite / 2 days remote (subject to team schedule)
Must be authorized to work in the United States without employer sponsorship. H1B visa holders will not be considered. W2 or Corp-to-Corp.
We are looking for a technically strong, business-savvy Data Engineering & BI Lead to join our Houston-based team on a Contract-to-Hire basis. This role sits at the intersection of business and technology you will be the person who walks into a room with stakeholders, listens carefully, asks the right questions, and walks out with a clear picture of what needs to be built and why. You will then lead your team from that vision all the way through to a delivered solution.
You will own the full arc: requirements gathering, solution design, architecture, hands-on development, team leadership, and stakeholder communication. This is not a role where business and technical work are siloed you will be the bridge. Your ability to earn trust with non-technical business partners and translate their needs into scalable, well-engineered data products is just as important as your technical depth.
Deep technical execution remains central to the role — you will be building alongside your team, not just directing from a distance. But what sets the ideal candidate apart is an exceptional ability to communicate: clearly, confidently, and credibly with both business leaders and engineers.
- *KEY RESPONSIBILITIES**
- *Stakeholder Engagement & Requirements Gathering**
- Serve as the primary data point of contact for business stakeholders across functions (operations, finance, commercial, etc.)
- Lead discovery sessions and working meetings to understand business problems, goals, and data needs
- Ask the right questions probing deeply to surface unstated requirements, edge cases, and success criteria
- Translate business requirements into well-defined technical specifications that the team can build against
- Manage stakeholder expectations throughout the delivery cycle — communicating progress, trade-offs, and timelines with clarity
- Present solutions, findings, and recommendations to senior business leaders in plain, compelling language
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- *Solution Design & Architecture**
- Design end-to-end data architecture spanning ingestion, transformation, storage, and BI delivery layers
- Evaluate and recommend technologies and patterns to meet current and future business requirements
- Define and enforce standards for pipeline design, data modeling, and dashboard development
- Own platform reliability, data quality, and observability practices
- *Hands-On Execution & Delivery**
- Build and maintain complex data pipelines and ELT/ETL workflows alongside the team
- Develop and optimize data models in the warehouse layer aligned to business reporting needs
- Create, review, and improve BI dashboards and semantic layers that drive real business decisions
- Resolve high-impact technical issues, data quality incidents, and delivery blockers
- *Team Leadership & Technical Reviews**
- Lead the team through the full development lifecycle from requirements to deployment providing clear direction at every stage
- Review pipeline code, SQL, and dashboard logic before production deployment
- Conduct architecture reviews for new features and integrations proposed by the team
- Own solution quality ensure deliverables are accurate, performant, maintainable, and well-documented
- *Coaching & Team Development**
- Guide and mentor data engineers and BI analysts in their day-to-day work
- Build communication and stakeholder skills within the team not just technical skills
- Foster a culture of ownership, clarity, and continuous improvement
- Identify skill gaps and create structured growth opportunities through pairing, reviews, and feedback
- *REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS**
- 10+ years of experience in data engineering, analytics engineering, or a closely related discipline
- Exceptional communication skills able to engage confidently with business executives, department heads, and non-technical stakeholders
- Proven ability to lead requirements-gathering sessions: facilitating discussions, asking probing questions, and documenting clear outcomes
- Strong track record of translating ambiguous business problems into well-scoped, well-architected data solutions
- Experience leading a team through the full delivery lifecycle from discovery and design through build, testing, and deployment
- Demonstrated experience in a lead or senior individual contributor role with ownership of architecture