Hybrid Lead Data Platform Engineer

at Virtuous

• Job title: Lead Data Platform Engineer
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Senior
• Salary: Not specified
• Degree requirement: No Education Requirement
• Tech skills: Cloud, ETL, SQL
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Phoenix, United States

About the role

• Lead Data Platform Engineer at Virtuous developing AI-ready data systems with a focus on Snowflake and dbt. Ensure accuracy and governance in the data ecosystem while collaborating across teams.

Responsibilities

• Own the evolution of Virtuous’s data platform, primarily on Snowflake and dbt, as a secure, scalable, and AI-ready system.
• Design data models, metadata, and access patterns that support natural-language querying and AI-assisted analysis.
• Partner with Data Operations and Teams across the company to ensure data structures are accurate, reusable, and aligned with business definitions.
• Prepare data foundations that allow AI tools to deliver consistent, timely, and trustworthy answers.
• Ensure AI systems access data exclusively through governed service accounts and role-scoped permissions, with query activity auditable and restricted according to enterprise data classification and access standards.
• Architect and implement role-based access controls within Snowflake and related data systems (including row- and column-level security), ensuring enforcement aligns with enterprise IAM standards, approved access policies, and centralized identity governance processes.
• In partnership with Security Operations and IT, translate approved enterprise access and compliance policies into enforceable platform-level controls, and maintain technical configurations to ensure ongoing alignment with those standards.
• Build governance patterns that are enforced by design — not by manual process.
• Support periodic access reviews and control validation processes in coordination with Security and Compliance teams, ensuring appropriate separation of duties between policy definition, approval, and technical implementation.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines, testing strategies, and deployment patterns for dbt and Snowflake.
• Design deployment, testing, and validation patterns that make accuracy the default.
• Establish platform standards, templates, and best practices that enable others to move faster without sacrificing quality or security.
• Increase the amount of trusted work the organization can do without increasing Data Ops involvement.
• Reduce ad hoc work by building reusable systems and guardrails.
• Act as a technical leader and thought partner across data-related initiatives.
• Own Snowflake warehouse strategy, resource governance, and cost optimization.
• Continuously improve performance, scalability, and reliability across the data platform.
• Identify and eliminate inefficiencies that increase cost, risk, or operational overhead.
• Collaborate with IT and Cloud Engineering to ensure Snowflake networking, storage integrations, and data movement patterns align with enterprise cloud security baselines, network segmentation standards, and infrastructure governance policies.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience in data engineering, platform engineering, or related infrastructure roles, with ownership of production systems.
• Deep expertise in Snowflake, especially:
• - Roles and RBAC
• - Row-level and column-level security
• - Warehouse design and cost optimization
• - Performance tuning and governance
• Strong experience using dbt to build and maintain shared data models, including macro development, testing strategies, source freshness, group model security implementation, and production deployment patterns.
• Advanced SQL skills and experience designing reliable ELT/ETL pipelines.
• Proven systems-thinking mindset, with the ability to reason about tradeoffs across correctness, access, cost, and speed.
• Clear communicator who can explain complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical partners.

Benefits

• Market competitive pay leveraging Carta data
• Employee recognition through Bonusly (birthdays, anniversaries, achievements, etc.)
• 401(k) retirement plan with company matching- 50% match up to 6% of compensation after 90 days
• We value our employee’s work-life balance and encourage taking advantage of Unlimited PTO
• Supportive time off including paid volunteer days and company holidays
• Employer-contributed healthcare benefits, encompassing medical, dental, and vision coverage, with plans available for dependents and choices for Health Savings Accounts (HSA) and Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA).
• 12 weeks primary parent leave, 4 weeks secondary parent leave - full pay (adoption as well)
• We pride ourselves on Community and host exciting company outings and events.