Founding Data Engineer

Snout•USA,

4d•$165,000 - $185,000•Remote

About The Position

Snout is seeking a remote, U.S. based Founding Data Engineer to build the data foundation for the company. This is the first dedicated data hire, reporting to the CTO. The role involves taking an existing Postgres operational database and a dbt-modeled analytics warehouse, and transforming them into a firm, documented, and trustworthy foundation. The engineer will be responsible for understanding the current data landscape, reconciling data from multiple veterinary practice-management systems and internal applications, owning and extending the dbt warehouse, hardening pipelines, and shaping a model for fast and reliable analysis. The role also includes engaging with stakeholders, presenting options with trade-offs and costs, and executing chosen paths. The goal is to establish Snout as a data-driven company and build a team underneath.

Requirements

6+ years building and maintaining production data systems as a data or analytics engineer
Deep SQL and hands-on PostgreSQL experience
Strong dbt and dimensional/data-modeling experience in production — you’ve built warehouses people actually trust
A track record of taming large, messy datasets from multiple source systems and turning them into something coherent
A pragmatist’s bias toward simplicity — you reach for the simplest thing that works, can justify every tool and layer you’d add, and can tell the difference between complexity that earns its keep and complexity that doesn’t
Strong communication: you can make a clear recommendation, back it with reasoning and cost, and commit wholeheartedly to a decision even when it isn’t the one you argued for
Comfortable being the first and only data person for a while — self-directed, and happy building the foundation before there’s a team

Nice To Haves

Experience as an early or first data hire who later grew a function or team
Python (or similar) for pipelines and tooling
Experience modeling data for LLM/AI consumption
Familiarity with veterinary or healthcare data, or PIMS systems (Cornerstone, AllyDVM, etc.)
Experience at a subscription or technology startup (Series A/B), on AWS

Responsibilities

Map Snout’s data landscape end to end — what exists, where it lives, what’s canonical vs. stale — and document it so it’s no longer tribal knowledge
Reconcile data from multiple source systems (application data + multiple PIMS ingests) into conformed, trustworthy models where a term like “appointment” or “invoice” means one thing
Own and extend our dbt warehouse: model the source-system activity that isn’t modeled yet, and raise the bar on tests, documentation, and data freshness
Own the ingestion pipelines and the warehouse rebuild — keep them reliable, and recommend where to simplify or consolidate
Keep clean, well-modeled data flowing to the tools that consume it, including our internal LLM/AI tooling
Run early discovery with stakeholders across GTM, CX, finance, and product; turn business questions into a build plan; present options with clear trade-offs and cost before executing
Set up and support the data analyst we hire next — be the technical foundation they build analysis on