Data Engineering Lead

Job Description:

Lead the Data Teams Powering Modern Customer Experiences

You know great data engineering is about more than pipelines and platforms. Its about helping people make smarter decisions creating reliable data foundations and enabling meaningful customer experiences at scale.

As a Data Engineering Lead youll guide talented engineering teams shape technical strategy partner with clients and influence how modern data platforms are built and operated. Youll balance leadership with hands-on technical involvement helping teams solve complex challenges while delivering measurable business outcomes.

This is a true player-coach opportunity where youll lead people drive delivery excellence and help define the future of data engineering cloud platforms AI-enabled solutions and customer data ecosystems.

What Youll Do

Lead and Grow High-Performing Teams

Youll support the development of Data Engineers by providing coaching mentorship career guidance and opportunities for growth. Youll help create an environment where team members can learn contribute and thrive.

Drive Technical Delivery

Youll oversee complex data engineering initiatives partnering with Solution Architects and stakeholders to deliver scalable high-quality data solutions. Youll help guide technical decisions manage delivery risks and ensure successful outcomes across multiple engagements.

Shape Engineering Excellence

Youll establish and promote best practices across data engineering including CI/CD testing code reviews observability data quality documentation and governance. Youll help create repeatable approaches that enable teams to deliver consistently and effectively.

Partner with Clients and Stakeholders

Youll collaborate with client leaders business stakeholders architects and delivery teams to translate business goals into actionable engineering solutions. Youll communicate complex technical concepts in a way that supports informed decision-making and successful project outcomes.

Innovate with AI and Emerging Technologies

Youll help evaluate and adopt modern technologies including AI-assisted engineering tools cloud-native analytics platforms warehouse-native AI solutions and next-generation data architecture patterns.

What Youll Bring

Required Qualifications

• 7 years of experience in data engineering including cloud-based data platforms ELT/ETL processes and production data pipelines.
• Strong experience with platforms such as Snowflake Databricks Google BigQuery Microsoft Fabric Azure Synapse or Amazon Redshift.
• Advanced SQL and Python skills.
• Experience with orchestration and transformation tools such as dbt Apache Airflow Azure Data Factory Dagster Prefect or similar technologies.
• Experience designing data models and customer-centric data solutions.
• Understanding of data quality lineage observability and governance best practices.
• Experience with Git CI/CD and modern engineering workflows.
• 2 years leading mentoring or managing data engineering teams.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to collaborate with technical and non-technical audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience with any combination of the following is welcomed:

• Snowflake Databricks dbt Adobe Real-Time CDP Salesforce Data Cloud or related certifications.
• Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) Real-Time CDP Customer Journey Analytics Salesforce Data Cloud Braze or other customer data platforms.
• AWS Google Cloud Platform Microsoft Azure or Infrastructure as Code technologies such as Terraform.
• AI/ML technologies warehouse-native AI capabilities feature engineering vector databases or LLM-ready data architectures.
• Data privacy governance consent management and secure data exchange practices.
• Pre-sales solution design technical estimation or consulting experience.

Why Youll Love This Opportunity

Make an Impact Beyond the Code

Your work will influence how organizations use data to better understand and engage their customers. The decisions you help make will drive business outcomes across analytics customer data platforms AI solutions and customer experience technologies.

Grow as a Leader

Youll have the opportunity to mentor engineers shape engineering culture build delivery standards and contribute to the long-term growth of both the team and the broader practice.

Work with Modern Technology

From cloud data warehouses and customer data platforms to AI-assisted engineering and emerging data technologies youll have exposure to innovative tools and platforms that are shaping the future of the industry.

We Encourage You to Apply

We recognize that talent comes from many different backgrounds and experiences. If youre excited about leading teams building modern data solutions and helping organizations unlock the value of their data we encourage you to apply even if your experience doesnt align perfectly with every qualification listed.

Your unique perspective experience and ideas can help us build stronger teams better solutions and more meaningful outcomes for our clients.

The annual salary range for this position is $94000 - $135K. Placement within the salary range is based on a variety of factors including relevant experience knowledge skills and other factors permitted by law.

Benefits available with this position include:

Medical vision and dental insurance

Life insurance

Short-term and long-term disability insurance

401k

Flexible paid time off

At least 15 paid holidays per year

Paid sick and safe leave and

Paid parental leave.

Dentsu also complies with applicable state and local laws regarding employee leave benefits including but not limited to providing time off pursuant to the Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act in accordance with its plans and policies. For further details regarding Dentsu benefits please visit .

To begin the application process please click on the Apply button at the top of this job posting. Applications will be reviewed on an ongoing basis and qualified candidates will be contacted for next steps.

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Location:

Chicago - N. State

Brand:

Merkle

Time Type:

Full time

Contract Type:

Permanent

Dentsu is committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees. We do this without regard to race color national origin sex sexual orientation gender identity age pregnancy childbirth or related medical conditions ancestry physical or mental disability marital status political affiliation religious practices and observances citizenship status genetic information veteran status or any other basis protected under applicable federal state or local law.

Dentsu is committed to providing reasonable accommodation to among others individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans. If you need an accommodation because of a disability to search and apply for a career opportunity with us please send an e-mail to by clicking on the link to let usknow the nature of your accommodation request and your contact information. We are here to support you.

Required Experience:

Senior IC