Interim Senior Data Engineer (Fractional/Contract)

The company is hiring a time-boxed, senior fractional Data Engineer to close several high-priority engineering projects while a full‑time hire is onboarded. This is a short (about 6–8 week) hands-on engagement focused on standing up decision-ready pipelines, auditing and documenting existing orchestration, and executing small data-hygiene fixes. The role is deliverable-driven — success is measured by pipelines delivered and documentation prepared for an FTE handoff. No long-term ownership or major codebase rewrites are expected.

Responsibilities

• Build production pipelines per scope (product analytics event stream; S3 → BigQuery ingestion for raw membership/enrollment data) toward the agreed end-state.
• Audit current orchestration and pipelines: map flows, document components, surface gaps, and provide prioritized recommendations the incoming FTE can act on.
• Deliver clear, actionable documentation for every pipeline and audit item to enable smooth FTE handoff.
• Implement small-lift data hygiene fixes (e.g., normalize customer state fields) — no-brainer fixes only.
• Default to advise-and-document rather than large structural rewrites; escalate any work requiring sign-off.
• Optionally (nice to have): implement an additional server-to-server third-party service → BigQuery pipeline if time permits.
• Operate within a timebox and guardrails; coordinate status and handoff with the company's data team.

Qualifications

• Senior, hands-on data engineer with proven ability to execute independently under tight timelines.
• Strong experience with BigQuery, cloud object storage (e.g., S3), and managed ETL/ELT tooling.
• Familiarity with transformation frameworks (e.g., dbt).
• Experience building event streams and analytics pipelines (experience with product analytics platforms is a plus).
• Proficiency in SQL and at least one scripting language commonly used for data engineering (Python preferred).
• Experience auditing and orchestrating pipelines and working with orchestration tools.
• Excellent written communication and documentation skills for FTE handoff.
• Comfort working in startup/B2B environments and delivering in an approximately 6–8 week, deliverable-based engagement.
• Nice to have: prior experience with server-to-server integrations (third-party services → BigQuery) and/or working within small engineering/data teams.