Lead Data Engineer

Only W2, No C2C

Job Title: Data Engineer - Datastage ETL IV
Location: REMOTE EST/CST
Years of Experience: 0-18
Contract Length: 8 months

TOP SKILLS: Must Have
2+ years salesforce application development
3+ years of proven experience with IBM DataStage.
Business Intelligence - Systems/ETL
Deep experience performing mapping, cleansing, deduplication, validation, and reconciliation for large datasets
salesforce migration experience
SQL

Nice To Have
Experience in banking, regulatory, or compliance-driven data migrations.
nCino
Proven experience leading data migration workstreams or teams

What You'll Do
We are seeking a Lead Data Engineer to oversee and guide complex, enterprisescale Salesforce data migration initiatives. This role provides technical leadership, solution direction, quality oversight, and execution leadership across all phases of data migration from mapping and extraction through transformation, validation, mock runs, cutover, and reconciliation.
You will work closely with Salesforce architects, business SMEs, DataStage developers, enterprise data teams, and project leadership to ensure the migration is accurate, compliant, repeatable, scalable, and fully documented.
This is a hands-on leadership role, not an architecture-only position you will design, review, troubleshoot, and build at key points, while guiding other engineers in execution.

Key Responsibilities (Lead-Level)
Technical Leadership & Ownership
Own the end-to-end technical design of Salesforce migration pipelines, including load strategy, dependency sequencing, staging architecture, and data quality controls.
Serve as the primary technical decision-maker for mapping logic, transformation patterns, validation strategies, and DataStage/Python ETL design.
Provide guidance, reviews, and signoff on mapping documents, data cleansing rules, and ETL workflows developed by senior and mid-level engineers.

Execution Leadership
Oversee and coordinate all migration phases: profiling, mapping, extraction, transformation, cleansing, mock runs, remediation, final load, and postload reconciliation.
Lead the creation of repeatable migration templates (mapping patterns, validation scripts, transformation libraries, reconciliation frameworks).
Troubleshoot the most complex DataStage ETL issues, load failures, and Salesforce API constraints.

Cross-Team Coordination
Partner closely with Salesforce architects to determine object load order, relationship handling, and platform constraints.
Work with business SMEs to validate mapping logic, resolve data issues, and approve reconciliation reports.
Coordinate across Salesforce, infrastructure, release management, and governance teams to align dependencies and cutover planning.

Quality, Governance & Controls
Define and enforce data validation rules, DQ acceptance thresholds, rejection criteria, and reconciliation metrics.
Ensure compliance with metadata, lineage, audit, and regulatory standards.
Drive defectmanagement workflows for mock runs and ensure timely root-cause resolution.

Documentation & Repeatability
Oversee and approve the migration runbook, including workflows, controls, schedules, rollback strategies, and support procedures.
Ensure all engineers document mappings, transformation rules, cleansing logic, and validation designs to project standards.

Mentorship & Team Leadership
Mentor DataStage developers, senior engineers, and analysts on transformation logic, debugging, and best practices in migration engineering.
Lead technical reviews and provide ongoing coaching to uplift the team's maturity and consistency.

Critical Deliverables (Lead-Level)
Approved endtoend migration solution design (mapping strategy, transformation patterns, load sequence).
Final signoff on:
Source-to-target mappings
Transformation logic
Cleansing & validation rules
Data extraction frameworks
ETL designs (DataStage/Python)
Oversight and acceptance of 3 mock migration runs.
Decision authority on defect triage and remediation approach.
Final production load execution leadership + verification sign-off.
Post-migration reconciliation and executiveready reporting.
Complete, approved migration runbook ready for audit or reuse.

Required Skills
Core Technical Expertise
Expert-level experience designing and overseeing ETL workflows using IBM DataStage.
Advanced SQL, including performance tuning, complex joins, windowing, and large-volume optimization.
Strong Python skills for automation, validation scripting, data corrections, and transformation logic.
Deep experience performing mapping, cleansing, deduplication, validation, and reconciliation for large datasets.
Strong command of data governance (DQ rules, lineage, controls, audit requirements).

Salesforce Migration Expertise
Strong understanding of Salesforce data model (objects, relationships, lookups, constraints, metadata).
Experience leading migrations using Data Loader, Bulk API, or other Salesforce ingestion tooling.
Experience designing load ordering strategies and resolving hierarchical or relational dependencies.

Leadership & Delivery
Proven experience leading data migration workstreams or teams.
Ability to drive technical decisions and mentor engineers.
Strong communication and stakeholder alignment skills.

Nice to Have
nCindo Experience
Experience with cloud data platforms (Snowflake/Azure/AWS) for staging/pre-processing.
Familiarity with CI/CD for scheduling DataStage/ETL pipelines.
Experience in banking, regulatory, or compliance-driven data migrations.

Qualifications
Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience.
10+ years in data engineering; 3+ in technical leadership roles.
Successful delivery of at least one large-scale Salesforce (or enterprise CRM) migration.