Lead Data Engineer

Why UKG

At UKG, the work you do matters. The code you ship, the decisions you make, and the care you show a customer all add up to real impact. Today, tens of millions of workers start and end their days with our workforce operating platform. Helping people get paid, grow in their careers, and shape the future of their industries. That’s what we do.

We are seeking a Lead Data Engineer to design, build, and lead the delivery of scalable data solutions on our Cloud Data Platform (GCP/Azure). This role plays a critical hands‑on leadership function, owning complex data pipelines and models while guiding a small team of data engineers through design, development, and best practices. The ideal candidate is a strong technical contributor who can translate architectural guidance into execution, partner closely with Product Owners and Architects, and ensure high‑quality, reliable data solutions aligned to business needs.

• Design, develop, and maintain end‑to‑end data pipelines and transformations using Azure (ADF, Databricks, ADLS Gen2, Synapse) and GCP (Composer, Data Fusion, Dataform, Data Proc, Big Query, GCS).
• Implement Fact and Dimension models, CDC patterns, and cloud‑native ELT pipelines following established architectural standards.
• Optimize data pipelines for performance, scalability, and cost efficiency.

• Serve as the technical lead for one or more data domains or initiatives.
• Lead design discussions, perform code reviews, and ensure adherence to engineering standards and best practices.
• Mentor and guide Senior and Mid‑level Data Engineers through hands‑on coaching and technical feedback.
• Act as the first point of escalation for complex technical issues within owned initiatives.

• Partner with Data Architects, Product Owners, Analysts, and Platform teams to translate business requirements into effective data solutions.
• Contribute to data modeling decisions to ensure alignment with analytics and reporting use cases.
• Support cross‑team initiatives by implementing shared frameworks and reusable components defined at the platform level.

• Ensure reliability and maintainability of data pipelines through monitoring, alerting, and automated testing.
• Implement and maintain CI/CD pipelines using Azure Dev Ops and/or Git Hub Actions.
• Create and maintain technical documentation for pipelines, models, and processes.
• Support data quality, governance, and metadata standards within owned solutions.

• 7–9+ years of experience in data engineering and data warehousing, including cloud‑based solutions.
• Proven experience delivering complex data pipelines and warehouse solutions in Azure and/or GCP.
• Strong hands‑on experience with Python, SQL, Spark, and distributed data processing.

• Azure:
  Data Factory, Databricks, Synapse, ADLS Gen2, Azure Dev Ops.
• GCP:
  Composer, Data Fusion, Dataform, Data Proc, Big Query, GCS, Git Hub.
• Solid understanding of Dimensional Modeling, ELT, CDC, and modern data lakehouse concepts.

• Demonstrated ability to lead technical delivery and influence design decisions within a team.
• Experience mentoring engineers through code reviews, pairing, and design guidance.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to explain technical concepts to non‑technical stakeholders.

• Experience integrating data from SaaS platforms (Salesforce, D365, Qualtrics, Pendo, etc.).
• Familiarity with Data Ops practices, orchestration, and monitoring tools.
• Exposure to data quality and governance concepts.
• Cloud certification (Azure or GCP) is a plus.

UKG is the Workforce Operating Platform that puts workforce understanding to work. With the world's largest collection of workforce insights, and people‑first AI, our ability to reveal unseen ways to build trust, amplify productivity, and empower talent, is unmatched. It's this expertise that equips our customers with the intelligence to solve any challenge in any industry — because great organizations know their workforce is their competitive edge.

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