Data Engineer - Snowflake & DBT

Kapitus•Arlington, VA

About The Position

Kapitus is hiring Data Engineers to build a modern enterprise data and AI platform for its financial services organization. The multi-year modernization program replaces legacy analytics workflows with governed, reusable business data products on a cloud data platform, establishes an AI/ML platform, and enables the organization to move from producing reports to producing decisions. The core technology stack is Snowflake and dbt, organized around a layered medallion architecture with governed conformed entities, certified semantic definitions, and reusable serving structures. The role builds ingestion and transformation pipelines, models data across platform layers, migrates legacy workflows, and delivers data products through evidence-based acceptance gates. The position reports to the Director of Data Engineering, who owns platform architecture and engineering standards. Work is considered complete when it has been validated, evidenced, and accepted; code completion alone is not sufficient. The engineer works with internal engineers and consulting-partner teams across onshore and offshore locations. Senior-level candidates may be considered for Senior Data Engineer roles. In addition to the core engineering work, senior engineers own complex workstreams or product slices, lead technical design within the approved architecture, review other engineers’ work, mentor team members, and drive difficult migrations or production issues to closure. Kapitus describes itself as a small-business financing company that operates as both a direct lender and a marketplace with lending partners. Its mission is to help small business owners grow through tailored, transparent, and ethical financing solutions. Remote candidates may be considered if they reside in a state where Kapitus or a subsidiary has an established physical presence.

Requirements

At least 5 years of hands-on data engineering experience building production data pipelines and warehouse models.
Strong hands-on Snowflake experience, including warehouse and database objects, performance- and cost-aware SQL, role-based access concepts, tasks/streams or equivalent patterns, and production-scale loading and unloading.
Production dbt experience building and maintaining projects, including layered model organization, incremental models, tests, documentation, macros, and shared multi-developer work with CI.
Expert SQL skills, including complex transformations, window functions, performance tuning, and judgment about when SQL is not the appropriate tool.
Solid Python experience for data engineering ingestion utilities, API integrations, automation, and orchestration code.
Experience with layered or medallion architecture, such as bronze/silver/gold or equivalent, and understanding of layer discipline, data grain, and conformed entities.
Engineering fundamentals including Git, code review, CI/CD, environment promotion, and automated testing as standard practice.
A strong data-quality and verification mindset, including thorough testing and reconciliation of work and production of complete verification evidence.
Clear written communication for design notes, pull request descriptions, and documentation that remains useful across time zones.
Senior Data Engineer consideration requires at least 8 years of experience and demonstrated workstream-level technical leadership, design ownership, code-review responsibility, and mentoring; additional years alone are not sufficient.

Nice To Haves

Experience with governed data architecture incorporating conformed or core entity models, certified metrics, semantic definitions, or data contracts.
Experience migrating legacy analytics workloads, such as Alteryx, SSIS, SAS, or stored-procedure estates, to a modern cloud stack, including parity testing against legacy outputs.
Experience in financial services, lending, banking, fintech, or another regulated environment, including sensitive data classifications and audit expectations.
Consulting or client-facing delivery experience.
Experience delivering under tight timelines and contractual acceptance criteria and working to milestones.
Orchestration experience with Airflow, Dagster, or similar tools; CDC or ingestion tooling; and streaming or near-real-time patterns.
Exposure to data catalogs and lineage tooling, semantic or BI layers such as Tableau or Sigma, and ML/AI data needs such as feature pipelines, training datasets, or retrieval foundations.
SnowPro or dbt certifications.

Responsibilities

Develop ELT pipelines on Snowflake and dbt, including source ingestion, transformations through medallion layers, and governed serving structures for BI, API, ML, and AI consumption.
Model staging, conformed core entities, dimensional models, and product-level data in accordance with approved grain, key, and naming standards.
Implement approved data contracts, conformed entity definitions, keys, relationships, and certified semantic definitions consistently across models.
Migrate legacy analytics workflows, such as Alteryx workflows, to dbt and Snowflake; analyze existing logic, implement it, demonstrate parity where required, and support retirement of legacy assets.
Implement data quality and observability controls, including dbt tests, source freshness checks, reconciliation and validation queries, and pipeline monitoring.
Contribute to shared ingestion frameworks, certified transformation patterns, and common serving structures to promote reuse.
Use Git-based workflows, peer code review, CI/CD, environment promotion, and operational documentation.
Follow and help improve platform engineering standards, including repository structure, dbt conventions, testing requirements, and performance and cost discipline.
Profile and tune query performance and manage Snowflake compute costs, including warehouse sizing, query efficiency, and clustering choices.
Support production systems by diagnosing failures, participating in incident and root-cause analysis, implementing durable corrective actions, and preventing recurring defects.
Surface risks and ambiguity early and resolve specification issues before they reach build, validation, or production.
Deliver against approved designs and acceptance criteria, produce developer verification evidence, support independent acceptance validation, and close validation defects promptly with root causes understood.
Work from design specifications and data contracts, raising ambiguous or incorrect specifications for resolution rather than silently improvising.
Collaborate with internal and partner engineers across onshore and offshore locations through clear written communication, clean handoffs, and deliberate use of overlap hours.
Estimate work honestly, flag schedule variances early, and support milestone-driven delivery.
For senior-level candidates: own complex workstreams or product slices, lead technical design within the approved architecture, review other engineers’ work, mentor team members, and drive difficult migrations or production issues to closure.

Benefits

Competitive base salary range of $96,300–$154,400, with final salary dependent on factors including location, skills, and experience.
Eligibility for annual incentive compensation of up to 10%.
Comprehensive medical, dental, and employer-paid vision plans through UnitedHealthcare, with multiple coverage levels.
UnitedHealthcare perks including Sweat Equity, a Calm App subscription, UHC rewards, Real Appeal, and Quit For Life.
Flexible Spending Account for qualified medical, dental, vision, pharmacy, or dependent-care expenses.
Lifestyle Spending Account reimbursing expenses related to physical, mental, and financial well-being.
Company-paid basic short-term and long-term disability insurance and vision insurance.
Voluntary supplemental life insurance and enhanced short- and long-term disability coverage through Mutual of Omaha; Colonial accident and hospitalization insurance options.
Company-paid maternity and parental leave beyond state-mandated leave policies.
Pre-tax commuter benefits for parking and commuting expenses.
LifeBalance membership with discounts on outdoor activities, arts, health, and fitness.
Pet and car insurance discounts.
Access to LegalShield financial services and relaxation and stress-management tools.
Plum Benefits discounts on shows, travel, and car rentals.
Tuition reimbursement of up to $5,000 annually, plus opportunities to attend relevant conferences and career development events through Kapitus Academy.
Travel reimbursement for work-related travel.
Paid time off and sick time.
401(k) plan managed through Fidelity, with a company match of 25% of employee contributions up to 6% of annual salary.