Lead Data Engineer

Our Dallas based manufacturing client is looking for a Senior Data Engineer. The RoleThis is a hands-on lead role with domain ownership. You will set the engineering standard, direct onsite and offshore resources, and be the primary interface between the data platform and business stakeholders in finance and operations. The right person acts before being asked and builds systems and processes for the team. The right person is someone who is most comfortable when they are close to the work, reviewing pipelines, making architecture calls, and writing code alongside the team, while also being able to step back and set the direction for how data engineering should operate for the next three to five years.What You Will OwnDomain ownership

• Define and maintain data engineering strategy, architecture standards, and best practices
• Own the data engineering roadmap, sequencing, prioritization, and alignment with the broader data and AI program
• Establish engineering patterns for ingestion, transformation, and delivery across the Microsoft Fabric platform
• Own data pipeline reliability, observability, and incident response across operational and reporting systems
• Drive the transition from the legacy Azure data stack to a Microsoft Fabric-native architecture

Team and resource management

• Manage a blended team of onsite and offshore data engineers - setting expectations, reviewing work, and developing capability
• Define the operating model for how onsite and offshore resources collaborate - sprint structure, review cadences, quality gates
• Own knowledge transfer and documentation standards - ensuring institutional knowledge is captured and distributed across the team
• Partner with the Head of Data, Analytics and AI on hiring decisions, contractor sourcing, and team structure

Hands-on delivery

• Design, build, and optimize production data pipelines across Azure Data Factory, Databricks, and Microsoft Fabric
• Own the data architecture for medallion platform - Bronze, Silver, and Gold layers, semantic modeling, and DirectLake reporting
• Support Power BI reporting infrastructure and serve as the engineering lead for report rationalization and migration
• Participate in governance and architecture design reviews, providing technical input on data platform decisions

• 8+ years of hands-on data engineering experience in the Microsoft Azure ecosystem
• Strong SQL and data modeling fundamentals - you can design a schema and debug a complex query yourself
• Production experience with Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse Analytics, or Databricks at scale
• Experience leading or managing data engineering teams - including offshore or distributed resources
• Ability to set technical direction: you have defined standards, written best practice documentation, or built engineering frameworks others follow
• Strong documentation discipline and a track record of reducing single points of failure through knowledge transfer
• Onsite availability in Dallas, TX from day one

Strong preference

• Hands-on experience with or active exploration of Microsoft Fabric - certifications, personal projects, or production exposure all count
• Familiarity with Dynamics 365 F&O data architecture and how ERP data flows into downstream reporting and analytics layers
• Experience managing a transition between a legacy data stack and a modern cloud-native platform