Azure Data Engineering and BI Lead

We are looking for a technically strong, business-savvy Data Engineering & BI Lead to join our Houston-based team on a Contract-to-Hire basis. This role sits at the intersection of business and technology you will be the person who walks into a room with stakeholders, listens carefully, asks the right questions, and walks out with a clear picture of what needs to be built and why. You will then lead your team from that vision all the way through to a delivered solution.

You will own the full arc: requirements gathering, solution design, architecture, hands-on development, team leadership, and stakeholder communication. This is not a role where business and technical work are siloed you will be the bridge. Your ability to earn trust with non-technical business partners and translate their needs into scalable, well-engineered data products is just as important as your technical depth.

Deep technical execution remains central to the role — you will be building alongside your team, not just directing from a distance. But what sets the ideal candidate apart is an exceptional ability to communicate: clearly, confidently, and credibly with both business leaders and engineers.

Stakeholder Engagement & Requirements Gathering

•       Serve as the primary data point of contact for business stakeholders across functions (operations, finance, commercial, etc.)

•       Lead discovery sessions and working meetings to understand business problems, goals, and data needs

•       Ask the right questions probing deeply to surface unstated requirements, edge cases, and success criteria

•       Translate business requirements into well-defined technical specifications that the team can build against

•       Manage stakeholder expectations throughout the delivery cycle — communicating progress, trade-offs, and timelines with clarity

•       Present solutions, findings, and recommendations to senior business leaders in plain, compelling language

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Solution Design & Architecture

•       Design end-to-end data architecture spanning ingestion, transformation, storage, and BI delivery layers

•       Evaluate and recommend technologies and patterns to meet current and future business requirements

•       Define and enforce standards for pipeline design, data modeling, and dashboard development

•       Own platform reliability, data quality, and observability practices

Hands-On Execution & Delivery

•       Build and maintain complex data pipelines and ELT/ETL workflows alongside the team

•       Develop and optimize data models in the warehouse layer aligned to business reporting needs

•       Create, review, and improve BI dashboards and semantic layers that drive real business decisions

•       Resolve high-impact technical issues, data quality incidents, and delivery blockers

Team Leadership & Technical Reviews

•       Lead the team through the full development lifecycle from requirements to deployment providing clear direction at every stage

•       Review pipeline code, SQL, and dashboard logic before production deployment

•       Conduct architecture reviews for new features and integrations proposed by the team

•       Own solution quality ensure deliverables are accurate, performant, maintainable, and well-documented

Coaching & Team Development

•       Guide and mentor data engineers and BI analysts in their day-to-day work

•       Build communication and stakeholder skills within the team not just technical skills

•       Foster a culture of ownership, clarity, and continuous improvement

•       Identify skill gaps and create structured growth opportunities through pairing, reviews, and feedback

•       10+ years of experience in data engineering, analytics engineering, or a closely related discipline

•       Exceptional communication skills able to engage confidently with business executives, department heads, and non-technical stakeholders

•       Proven ability to lead requirements-gathering sessions: facilitating discussions, asking probing questions, and documenting clear outcomes

•       Strong track record of translating ambiguous business problems into well-scoped, well-architected data solutions

•       Experience leading a team through the full delivery lifecycle from discovery and design through build, testing, and deployment

•       Demonstrated experience in a lead or senior individual contributor role with ownership of architecture or technical direction

•       Strong proficiency in SQL and at least one scripting/programming language (Python preferred)

•       Hands-on experience with cloud data platforms such as Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, or Redshift

•       Experience building and maintaining data pipelines using tools like dbt, Apache Airflow, Azure Data Factory, or equivalent

•       Proficiency with BI platforms such as Power BI, Tableau, Looker, or similar

•       Strong understanding of data modeling concepts (dimensional modeling, data vault, or medallion architecture)

•       Experience conducting code reviews and driving engineering standards across a team

•       Experience in energy, oil & gas, utilities, or other Houston-area industries is a plus

•       Familiarity with cloud platforms: Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud Platform

•       Knowledge of data governance, data catalog, or metadata management practices

•       Experience with streaming or real-time data pipelines (Kafka, Spark Streaming, etc.)

•       Prior experience in a formal or informal mentorship or coaching capacity