Senior Data Engineer

Tennessee Hospital Association • Brentwood, TN

3d • Hybrid

About The Position

This position is the primary builder and steward of THA’s data infrastructure. The role is responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining the ETL pipelines, database systems, and data integrations that power THA’s member-facing programs and internal operations. The Data Engineer ensures the reliable delivery of healthcare data products, including the Health Information Network’s quarterly hospital discharge data program and hospital quality reporting, and maintains the SQL Server environment that supports them. This role requires a builder’s mindset: someone equally at home designing a new pipeline from scratch, troubleshooting a failing one, and owning the server environment underneath both.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree with 5+ years of experience in data engineering, ETL development, or a closely related technical role; 7-10 years strongly preferred.
• Equivalent hands-on professional experience considered in lieu of a degree.
• Demonstrated experience building and owning production data pipelines, not solely maintaining pipelines built by others, is required.
• Advanced T-SQL development on SQL Server 2016+, including complex query writing, performance optimization, stored procedures, and schema design.
• Strong, hands-on ETL development experience with the ability to design, build, and debug production-grade data pipelines; SSIS experience required.
• SQL Server administration: patching, backup and restore, capacity planning, index management, performance tuning, and user access management.
• Report development using SSRS and Power BI.
• Experience with or active use of AI coding tools (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot) to accelerate development; must demonstrate foundational knowledge developed independent of those tools, sufficient to evaluate, validate, and correct AI-generated code.
• HIPAA compliance experience is required.
• Strong interpersonal skills and ability to communicate technical concepts effectively to non-technical staff.
• Excellent organizational skills and ability to manage multiple concurrent projects.
• Windows Server 2016+; Microsoft Office including Excel.

Nice To Haves

• Experience working in or with healthcare organizations or similar data-sensitive, compliance-oriented environments is preferred.
• Healthcare data experience, particularly hospital discharge/claims data, financial, and quality/safety metrics, is strongly preferred.
• Python experience for data automation, pipeline scripting, or API integration is strongly preferred.
• Microsoft Azure SQL familiarity a plus.
• SAS familiarity a plus.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes and data pipelines.
• Build new integrations as THA programs require them and ensure existing manual and automated workflows run reliably across THA’s data programs (DataBank, IRF, HIP, etc).
• Serve as the primary technical resource for quarterly processing of hospital UB-04 discharge data.
• Develop and optimize complex T-SQL queries, stored procedures, views, functions, and triggers.
• Design and model new databases.
• Create and manage SQL Server objects and Agent jobs that automate routine operations.
• Build and maintain integrations with external data systems and vendors, including state agencies and national healthcare data sources (e.g., NHSN).
• Develop automated tools that facilitate data submission and exchange for member hospitals.
• Develop and maintain reports and analytics products using Tableau, Power BI, and similar tools.
• Fulfill ad hoc data requests from THA staff and support data subscriptions that generate direct revenue for the organization.
• Manage SQL Server environments across development and production: patching and version upgrades, backup and recovery processes, storage and capacity planning, index management, query performance tuning, and user access (logins, connection strings, permissions).
• Implement and maintain appropriate controls, auditing, authentication, and encryption on all protected datasets.
• Handle all data in accordance with HIPAA requirements, THA data security policy, and applicable data release agreements.
• Work with IS/IT staff, program teams, and data analysts to understand data needs and translate them into reliable technical solutions.
• Provide guidance and support to application developers and data analysts.
• Create and maintain documentation for all processes, system configurations, and changes.

What This Job Offers

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