Senior Data Engineer

Position Overview:

The Senior Data Engineer is responsible for designing, building, and optimizing scalable and reliable data solutions. This role ensures high-quality data pipelines, supports advanced analytics, and contributes to architectural decisions. The Senior Data Engineer works closely with cross-functional teams and mentors junior engineers.

Key Responsibilities:

• Software Development life cycle:
• Analyze data requirements and define scalable data solutions
• Design and build optimized, reusable, and maintainable ETL/ELT pipelines
• Write efficient, scalable, and high-quality code
• Conduct testing activities (unit, integration) to ensure reliability
• Review and debug team members’ code to maintain quality standards
• Document data pipelines, systems, and technical processes
• Build and maintain data systems to ensure performance, reliability, and scalability
• Collaborate with Architects on design and data architecture decisions
• Ensure data pipelines meet performance, quality, and reliability standards
• Design and maintain data lineage, data quality controls, observability practices, service-level expectations, and ownership documentation for production data pipelines and data assets.
• Identify and resolve issues related to data quality, pipeline reliability, lineage, performance, ownership, and downstream consumer impact.
• Partner with upstream and downstream teams to clarify data contracts, service-level expectations, ownership, and production support needs.

Collaboration and communication:

• Partner with cross-functional teams to design and deliver data solutions
• Present solutions and updates to technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Maintain two-way communication with Manager/Leads regarding status of planned deliverables.

Problem Solving:

Identify and resolve complex data issues and performance bottlenecks

Continuous Improvement:

• Evaluate new tools, technologies, and processes to improve systems
• Promote best practices in data engineering

Mentorship:

• Provide guidance and support to junior data engineers
• Conduct code reviews and support skill development
• Ensure data solutions are designed for production use, adoption by downstream consumers, measurable business value, and ongoing reliability.

Skills:

• Strong problem-solving and debugging skills
• Strong written and oral communication skills
• Strong time management, prioritization and organizational skills
• Ability to work independently with minimal direction
• Strong collaboration skills with analytics, business, and cross-functional teams
• Strong knowledge of software development methodologies (e.g., Agile, Scrum)
• Must be willing to learn new technologies and programming languages and/or concepts
• Hands-on experience with data modelling, data governance, data quality management, and implementing enterprise data quality frameworks to support accuracy, consistency, and compliance across data assets.
• Experience with development standards, including version control, testing, and documentation, to ensure maintainable and scalable codebases
• Strong SQL expertise with experience optimizing queries and working with SQL and NoSQL databases (PostgreSQL, BigQuery, etc.)
• Strong experience building scalable ETL/ELT pipelines for structured and unstructured data
• Experience with GCP tools and services, including BigQuery, Cloud Storage, Dataflow, Dataform, Dataplex, Pub/Sub, and PostgreSQL, with hands-on experience building scalable ETL/ELT pipelines and cloud-based data solutions.
• Experience with orchestration frameworks such as Apache Airflow for managing data workflows
• Experience with batch and streaming frameworks such as Apache Spark or Beam
• Experience identifying and resolving performance bottlenecks in data pipelines and infrastructure, optimizing data processing and access
• Experience building scalable and resilient applications using Python and frameworks such as FastAPI/Flask, leveraging cloud-native and API-first design principles
• Experience with development and productivity tools such as BitBucket, Jira, and GitHub Copilot

Direct Manager/Direct Reports:

Reports to Manager Technology

Travel Requirements:

Travel to SSC Toronto on a regular basis.

• Physical Requirements
• Extended sitting
• Repetitive tasks
• Operating a computer and other technology

• Working Conditions
• Working in an office setting: computer work, camera on virtual meetings
• Work overnights and weekends on occasion to support system upgrades and project deployments

Minimum Education:

A bachelor’s degree in computer science or equivalent work experience.

Minimum Years of Work Experience:

4-7 Years of Relevant Work Experience.

Minimum Leadership Experience:

Formal people leadership experience is not required; demonstrated ability to mentor junior engineers, support code reviews, or provide technical guidance is strongly preferred.

Other Requirements/Assets:

• Previous leadership experience or demonstrated ability to mentor and provide technical guidance.
• Previous retail experience will be considered an asset.
• Development experience on Fortune 500 Organizations an asset
• Experience with Tableau, Looker, or other reporting and visualization tools; exposure to Machine Learning, AI, or advanced analytics solutions is considered an asset.