Senior Data Engineer

Faegre Drinker Firm

Faegre Drinker is a firm designed for clients and designed for you. We understand that our people are critical to our success and we are committed to investing in our paraprofessional, administrative and operations professionals. We are always looking for talented, service-focused individuals to join our flexible and high-performing culture. With technology tools and resources that support our hybrid work environment, our colleagues enjoy a culture of learning, support for work and personal goals, opportunities to give back to our communities, and competitive benefits and rewards programs. At Faegre Drinker, you will have the opportunity to share your expertise within and across teams and contribute to our success.

Senior Data Engineer

Faegre Drinker has an opportunity for a Senior Data Engineer to work with our Technology and Innovation team in our Chicago, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, New York City or Washington, D.C. office. You will be part of a dynamic team dedicated to leading firm-side source-to-consumption delivery for the firm's enterprise data lake, built on Databricks, applying a Bronze/Silver/Gold medallion architecture across data ingestion, transformation, and consumption. This position will work with other talented individuals who share a passion for doing great work in the best interest of our clients.

What You Would Do:

• Designs, builds, and operates scalable ingestion and transformation pipelines (batch, CDC, and streaming) from systems such as Finance, HR, DMS, and CRM into the Bronze and Silver layers of the Databricks medallion architecture
• Implements Silver-layer cleansing, deduplication, type conformance, and cross-system key resolution, maintaining data lineage and auditability
• Owns orchestration (Delta Live Tables / Workflows), source control, automated testing, monitoring, and the CI/CD promotion path across Dev/Test/Prod
• Provides technical input on source data availability, grain, and refresh cadence to inform Gold-layer design and Unity Catalog Metric View definitions
• Special projects and other duties as assigned

What Is Expected:

• Ability to problem-solve
• Excellent interpersonal, verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to communicate effectively in a virtual environment (e.g., via phone, web/videoconference)
• Ability to concentrate on tasks, make decisions and work calmly and effectively in a high-pressure, deadline-orientated environment
• Demonstrated ability to use good judgment in taking initiative while asking for direction or clarification and consulting others, as appropriate
• Willingness to be flexible with time and adjust to a changing work environment
• Ability to build and maintain positive relationships, both internally and externally, while maintaining a client service orientation
• Ability to use sound judgment and discretion in dealing with highly confidential information
• Ability to take direction and accept supervision
• Demonstrated ability to work independently, organize and accurately prioritize work, be detail-oriented, understand when urgency is required and use good judgment in varied situations
• Ability to work effectively with co-workers in a team oriented collaborative environment

What We Offer:

• Flexible working environment for work-life success
• Opportunity to participate in firm-sponsored volunteer events
• Wellness programming with personalized content and activities
• Professional environment and the opportunity to work with experts at the top of their fields
• Variety of health plan options, as well as dental, vision and 401(k) plans
• Generous paid time off

The anticipated initial annual salary range for someone who is hired into this position is $139,300 - $159,200.

Actual initial salary may be above or below the above-identified range and will be based on the relevant skills, training, experience, and other job-related factors, including the location where the position is filled, in all cases consistent with applicable law. This is an exempt role and the initial salary range listed above is just one component of Faegre Drinker's total compensation and benefits package for professional staff, which includes, but is not limited to, a discretionary bonus; life, health, accident, and disability insurance; and a 401(k) plan.

What Is Required:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related technical discipline; or equivalent years of professional experience
• 8+ years of production-grade data engineering experience, including hands-on pipeline design, build, and operation
• Strong, hands-on experience with Spark/PySpark, SQL, Delta Lake, and Unity Catalog;
• Direct Azure Databricks experience strongly preferred
• Demonstrated experience with orchestration tooling (e.g., Delta Live Tables, Workflows), CI/CD, version control, and automated testing for data pipelines
• Experience embedding data security, matter-level or client-level data isolation, and privilege-aware access controls in pipeline design
• Ability to mentor and set technical standards for less experienced engineers