Power BI Tech Lead

Power BI Tech Lead
West Des Moines, Iowa

Job Description
Power BI Tech lead

We are seeking a highly skilled Power BI Technical Lead to join our growing Data & Analytics team. This role is responsible for leading the design, development, and implementation of advanced BI solutions using Power BI, with a focus on integrating AWS-based data platforms and leveraging Microsoft Fabric solutions. The ideal candidate will possess strong technical acumen, leadership qualities, and the ability to influence modern BI reporting strategies across the organization. support a key modernization initiative focused on transforming operational reporting through the implementation of new tools, data processes, workflows, and BI technologies. This role will be responsible for migrating legacy reports, developing new reporting solutions in Power BI, and contributing to overall reporting modernization efforts. The ideal candidate brings strong Power BI and SQL skills, hands-on experience with data modeling and DAX, and the ability to work effectively across technical and business teams in a fast-paced, Agile environment.

Key Responsibilities:
Semantic Model Design, Solution architecting and Implementation:
o Architect and maintain robust Power BI data models (datasets) with clearly defined measures, hierarchies, and calculated columns.
o Ensure adherence to star schema modeling best practices, including the use of fact and dimension tables, role-playing dimensions, surrogate keys, and bi-directional filtering when appropriate.
o Design optimized relationships and data granularity alignment across tables to support accurate aggregations and slicing/filtering.
o Derive various model storage architectural patterns to fit into DW and DataLake data landscape having performant and scalable model architecture.
o Good understanding of multi-Cloud Data architecture within AWS and Azure, cross cloud networking, data egress, data integration using Gateway installer to best design semantic model architecture.
o Understanding of Business Objects universe functionalities and BI platform migration from BO to Power BI is an added advantage.
o AWS Data Integration to azure Fabric using various fabric capabilities to support design and development of DirectLake data model.
o Utilize Power Query (M language) for data shaping, transformation, and cleansing while ensuring query folding is preserved in DirectQuery mode.
o Collaborate with data engineers to validate source-to-model mapping, and offload heavy transformation logic to upstream pipelines (e.g., Dataflows, Fabric, or SQL views) where appropriate.
o Ensure data lineage, traceability, and refresh reliability throughout the modeling layer.

DAX Development and Optimization
o Design and Develop complex DAX measures to compute KPIs, time-intelligent metrics (e.g., YTD, MTD, YoY), variance analysis, and conditional logic across multiple fact sources including custom measures in DAX to control filter propagation and aggregation.
o Optimize DAX code for performance and readability, ensuring low query latency and avoiding performance bottlenecks s uch as context transition issues and row-by-row calculations.
o Create calculation groups (via Tabular Editor) to simplify and scale common business logic.
o Using Active and Inactive Relationships and activate specific relationship to handle hierarchical data patterns in policy and agency systems.
o implementing derived logic-across Power Query, DAX, and external SQL views.
o Use inactive relationships and DAX functions like USERELATIONSHIP() to activate a specific join path dynamically in measures and follow other Data Modeling best practices.

Report Design and UX Consistency
o Design and solution development of visually consistent and functionally rich Power BI reports, paginated reports and dashboards that adhere to enterprise design standards and visual story telling.
o Leverage features like drill-through, bookmarks, tooltips, and slicers to improve report interactivity and narrative flow.
o Define and enforce UI/UX patterns for accessibility, mobile-friendliness, and usability across business units.
o While many reports may be tabular in nature, the ability to deliver clear, effective visualizations remains important for select use cases.

Performance Tuning and Optimization
o Conduct performance analysis of Power BI models and reports using DAX Studio, Performance Analyzer, and VertiPaq Analyzer.
o Apply advanced optimization techniques such as:
o Minimizing column cardinality
o Reducing table size through filtering and summarization
o Removing unnecessary columns
o Aggregating data at multiple levels
o Drive efforts to maintain sub-second performance in high-traffic dashboards.
Version Control, Governance, and Deployment
o Implement and manage version control and deployment strategies for Power BI content using tools like azure DevOps pipeline.
o Define reusable semantic models (shared datasets) and promote a single source of truth across reports.
o Establish and enforce naming conventions, documentation standards, and governance policies for datasets, reports, and workspaces.

Qualifications:
Strong hands-on experience with Power BI (required), including data modeling and DAX, Power Query language, PostgreSQL.
Proficiency in SQL for querying, transforming, and validating data (required).
Familiarity with additional BI tools such as Tableau and Business Objects (preferred).
Experience with Jira and Agile development methodologies.
Strong attention to detail and ability to independently troubleshoot data/reporting issues.
Excellent communication skills and ability to explain complex data concepts to non-technical users.