Lead Data Engineer

Credit Union of Southern California • Anaheim, CA

just now • Hybrid

About The Position

The Lead Data Engineer will play a critical role in designing, building, and maintaining the data architecture that powers enterprise business intelligence and analytics at the credit union. This individual will serve as a hands-on senior data engineer mentoring more junior team members, partnering closely with BI developers, analysts, and business stakeholders to deliver trusted, scalable, and well-governed data solutions.

This role is ideal for a technically strong data professional who enjoys balancing architecture, engineering, and data enablement in a regulated financial environment, and who is also excited by the prospect of taking the Data & Analytics practice to the next level of maturity.

Requirements

• High School Diploma or equivalent
• 10+ years of experience in data and analytics engineering and support operations
• Deep experience working with data warehouses or lakehouse platforms (cloud or on-prem)
• Experience with Snowflake/AWS cloud data platform
• Advanced proficiency with SQL and at least one data transformation framework or ETL/ELT tool
• Solid understanding of data governance, data quality, and security concepts
• Proficient in all applicable MS Office programs (i.e., Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, etc.)
• Provide mentorship and technical guidance to team members
• Collaborative mindset with a passion for enabling data-driven decisions
• Ability to think strategically while remaining hands-on
• Strong communication skills with technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Attention to data accuracy, reliability, and compliance

Nice To Haves

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience)
• Experience in financial services, banking, or credit unions
• Strong experience designing analytical data models (star schema, snowflake, fact/dimension modeling)
• Experience designing and evolving enterprise data architecture that supports reporting, analytics, and self-service BI
• Ability to define and maintain logical and physical data models (dimensional, relational, and analytical)
• Understanding of data standards, naming conventions, and modeling best practices
• Working knowledge of aligning architecture with security, privacy, regulatory, and governance requirements
• Ability to develop in Tableau Desktop independently as needed
• Familiarity with CI/CD, version control
• Experience with metadata management or data catalog tools
• Comfortable working within the Agile framework

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain scalable data pipelines (batch and/or near-real-time)
• Ingest, transform, and integrate data from core banking systems, third-party vendors, and internal applications
• Optimize data performance, reliability, and cost across storage and compute layers in Snowflake
• Implement data quality checks, monitoring, and error handling
• Partner with BI developers and analysts to ensure data structures support reporting and analytics needs
• Create curated data marts, semantic layers, or analytics-ready datasets, balancing immediate needs with the strategic vision for the data model/architecture
• Support and troubleshoot downstream BI solutions and dashboards
• Develop or enhance dashboards in Tableau Desktop when needed
• Implement data access controls, masking, and lineage
• Support regulatory, audit, and risk management requirements common to financial institutions
• Contribute to metadata management and documentation
• Advise on best practices as they relate to BI data governance, security, and compliance
• Serve as a technical lead and mentor for BI analysts and data engineering team members
• Translate business requirements into technical solutions
• Collaborate with IT, Information Security, and business units
• Complete understanding and active application the C.A.R.E. 4 Guide expectations and the Brand Communications Standards Accountability Philosophy
• Must be able and available to work a “hybrid” schedule, per business operations requirement, as needed
• Additional duties and responsibilities, as assigned

Benefits

• We offer competitive pay, great health benefits and a culture like no other!
• CU SoCal is a Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award Recipient
• The CU SoCal culture fosters Building Better Lives for our Members, personal development, open communication, and genuine care for each other.
• We prioritize C.A.R.E. 4: professional competence, positive attitude, relationship building, and eager service to others.
• We support Pay Transparency and are a pay-for-performance organization that benchmarks base pay to the 50th percentile of market data.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: High school or GED