DataOps Engineer (26-27)

IDEA Public Schools • Weslaco, TX

1d • $89,600 - $105,300

About The Position

DataOps Engineer Mission: The DataOps Engineer designs and maintains the automation, testing, and deployment infrastructure that allows IDEA’s data platform to operate reliably at scale. This role applies DevOps principles to data systems -- eliminating manual processes, improving deployment safety, and enabling Platform and Analytics Engineering teams to ship faster without sacrificing reliability. Reporting to the Managing Director of Data Platform & Engineering, this engineer serves as the organization’s automation and reliability expert, partnering closely with Platform Engineering (infrastructure and ingestion) and Analytics Engineering ( dbt transformations and data quality). This role is ideal for someone who enjoys building systems, tooling, and automation that make other engineers dramatically more effective. Supervisory Responsibilities: Individual contributor role with no direct reports. Acts as a peer technical expert across Platform and Analytics Engineering teams. Location: This is a full-time position based in Texas, with preference given to candidates who live in Austin, El Paso, Houston, Permian Basin (Midland/Odessa), Rio Grande Valley, San Antonio, and Tarrant County (Fort Worth), or who are willing to relocate. Travel Expectations: Minimal travel (5–10% annually) for collaboration, training, or critical implementation milestones.

Requirements

• Hands-on experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines in production environments.
• Strong proficiency with infrastructure-as-code tools (Terraform or equivalent).
• Solid programming and scripting skills (Python, shell) for automation and tooling.
• Experience operating production systems with monitoring, alerting, and incident response.
• Familiarity with modern data platforms and analytics engineering workflows (e.g., Snowflake, dbt ).
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science , Engineering, Information Systems, or related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of experience in DevOps, platform engineering, SRE, or similar technical roles.
• Demonstrated experience automating deployments, infrastructure, and operational workflows with measurable impact.

Nice To Haves

• Experience supporting data pipelines, analytics platforms, or dbt deployments.
• Knowledge of Snowflake administration and performance considerations.
• Familiarity with data ingestion tools and APIs (e.g., Fivetran , Airbyte ).
• Exposure to containerization or SRE practices.
• Experience working in regulated or privacy-sensitive environments (education preferred).
• Experience supporting data platforms, analytics engineering workflows, or large-scale data pipelines in production environments.
• Hands-on experience with Snowflake administration, performance tuning, or environment management.
• Experience deploying or supporting dbt projects, including CI/CD integration and testing automation.
• Familiarity with data ingestion tools and APIs (e.g., Fivetran , Airbyte ) and automating their configuration or deployment.
• Exposure to containerization or site reliability engineering (SRE) practices.
• Experience working in regulated or privacy-sensitive environments (education, healthcare, or public sector).
• Relevant certifications (e.g., Terraform Associate, cloud DevOps certifications) or demonstrated equivalent expertise.
• Contributions to open-source tooling, internal developer platforms, or shared automation frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain CI/CD pipelines for data workflows, enabling automated testing, validation, and safe deployment to production.
• Implement deployment automation for dbt projects, Snowflake infrastructure, and data ingestion tools with proper environment promotion and approval gates.
• Develop safe deployment strategies (rollback, canary, blue/green) that reduce risk and downtime.
• Maintain CI/CD tooling, documentation, and runbooks to ensure reliability and team adoption.
• Own infrastructure-as-code for the data platform, using Terraform to provision and manage Snowflake environments and related resources.
• Automate operational tasks such as environment setup, access provisioning, configuration management, and resource monitoring.
• Build reusable automation tools, scripts, and templates that enable self-service provisioning and reduce manual toil.
• Partner with Platform Engineering to align on IaC standards, patterns, and shared modules
• Design and implement monitoring and observability for data pipelines, dbt models, and platform health.
• Build dashboards and alerts tracking pipeline success, data freshness, test results, and system performance.
• Implement intelligent alerting with clear escalation paths and minimal noise.
• Establish incident response practices, runbooks, and post-incident learning loops.
• Implement automated testing frameworks for data pipelines, including schema validation, regression testing, and data contract checks.
• Enable automated execution and reporting of data quality tests in CI/CD workflows.
• Partner with Analytics Engineering to standardize dbt test patterns and quality enforcement strategies.
• Maintain test environments, fixtures, and safe testing workflows for production-bound changes
• Serve as a DataOps advisor to Platform and Analytics Engineering teams, identifying automation opportunities and reducing friction.
• Review pull requests with a focus on deployment safety, testing coverage, and operational risk.
• Document DataOps standards and best practices, enabling scalable self-service adoption.
• Partner with the Managing Director on DataOps strategy, tooling decisions, and technical roadmap.

Benefits

• medical, dental, and vision plans, disability, life insurance, parenting benefits, flexible spending account options, generous vacation time, referral bonuses, professional development, and a 403(b) plan
• IDEA may offer a relocation stipend to defray the cost of moving for this role, if applicable.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level