Snowflake Architect / Lead

Snowflake Architect / Lead Role overview: A senior data engineer who will design, develop, and lead Snowflake-based data solutions using DBT, with responsibility for a small team (3 resources), and for coordinating with Lead for status updates and with business stakeholders for architecture decisions. The role also entails producing high-level documentation to understand development complexity and to enable accurate team assignment and timeline estimation. Key responsibilities: Develop and maintain scalable Snowflake data solutions and DBT transformations. Lead team of resources: assign tasks, perform code reviews, mentor, and manage performance. Collaborate with the Merck Lead to provide regular status updates and escalate issues as needed. Engage with business stakeholders to define architecture, data models, data flow, and integration patterns. Produce high-level architecture documents outlining scope, components, interfaces, risks, and complexity to support allocation and timelines. Define and manage project timelines, milestones, and estimates; translate requirements into a practical development plan. Ensure data quality, governance, security, and compliance across pipelines. Establish CI/CD pipelines for Snowflake/DBT deployments (preferably using Azure DevOps or equivalent). Implement robust testing strategies: unit tests, data quality checks, and validation processes. Create and maintain documentation for data models, data lineage, and development standards. Identify performance bottlenecks, optimize Snowflake queries and DBT models, and implement best practices. Collaborate across teams (data engineering, analytics, product) to ensure alignment with business goals. Good to have basic to mid-level knowledge on AWS and Streamlit Required qualifications: 12-15 years of overall experience in data engineering, with a minimum of 67 years of relevant and hands-on expertise in Snowflake and DBT. Proficiency in using Fivetran for automated ELT data ingestion, with experience in integrating Fivetran pipelines with dbt and Snowflake for scalable data solutions. Strong SQL proficiency and advanced Python skills for data processing and automation. Deep expertise in Snowflake architecture, performance tuning, and data modeling (OLTP/OLAP/Data Vault 2.0). Extensive experience building and operating DBT-based pipelines and managing DBT projects. Experience with CI/CD and release management; familiarity with Azure DevOps or similar toolchains. Familiarity with IaC concepts and tools (Terraform, CloudFormation). Demonstrated leadership experience: mentoring junior developers, running small teams, and stakeholder management. Excellent communication skills and ability to convey complex concepts to non-technical stakeholders. Exposure to cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and data governance concepts. Nice-to-have: Experience with additional analytics and data technologies; knowledge of streaming data (e.g., Apache Kafka) is a plus. Prior experience in architecture documentation and creating detail-level or high-level design artifacts. Role outcomes: A well-scoped architecture, a capable 3-person team, and a credible, detailed timeline for delivery. A set of high-level documents that explain the complexity of development and support future planning. .