Data Infratructure Engineer

Job Description

USF Advancement is on a trajectory of growth and transformation, and we are seeking a forward thinking, strategic Data Infrastructure Engineer to help build the next generation of our Advancement data ecosystem. This role serves as a critical change agent, leading and collaborating with both technology and business stakeholders to shape an AI ready and human centered data foundation that supports our mission.

Reporting to the Director of Systems and Infrastructure, the Data Infrastructure Engineer plays a key role in bridging the gap between development officer needs, operational workflows, and the analytics capabilities that power insight driven decision making. As a core member of the Technology Innovation and Strategic Solutions (TISS) team, the incumbent will help address a fragmented data environment by engineering reliable, scalable, and well governed data pipelines and integrations.

This work is central to our strategic plan to modernize Advancement systems, improve data quality, and strengthen the digital backbone that supports fundraising, engagement, and organizational effectiveness.

• Design and support a modern cloud based data environment using Microsoft Fabric services, including Mirrored Databases, Direct Lake, and lakehouse oriented storage.
• Contribute to the architectural design of Advancement’s enterprise data estate, ensuring structures support scalable analytics, real time data access, and readiness for future AI capabilities.
• Apply Fabric decision guides and best practices to ensure data is modeled, stored, and surfaced in the most appropriate Fabric experience (Warehouse, Lakehouse, Direct Lake, Mirrored DB, etc.).

• Engineer reliable, maintainable data flows that ingest, transform, and deliver data from CRM Advance, SQL Server, SaaS platforms, and additional internal or external sources.
• Modernize legacy, on premises or file-based processes by transitioning them to Fabric, cloud based connectors, APIs, and scalable ingestion patterns.
• Optimize data processing and delivery to support reporting, analytics, and emerging AI workloads across Advancement.

• Implement data governance and security practices that ensure Advancement data is accurate, controlled, and appropriately protected across the full data lifecycle.
• Apply access controls and identity standards using Microsoft Entra  safeguard sensitive donor and financial information.
• Support compliance with institutional policies and industry standards through well-structured metadata, lineage, and quality checks.

• Establish monitoring and observability for Fabric workloads, ingestion processes, data refreshes, and data quality exceptions.
• Support uptime and operational reliability of the data platform, troubleshooting issues and identifying opportunities for system improvements.
• Ensure analytics teams have consistent, well governed access to curated semantic models and stable dataset availability across tools such as Power BI or Tableau.

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, MIS or other field involving software and analytical training, OR a Bachelor's degree with no specific required field and one year of relevant work experience, OR a combination of 4 years of relevant work experience and validated training. Preparation for a relevant IT certification, validated through certification requirements and documentation of completion, is considered to be related training.

Degree Equivalency Clause:
Four years of direct experience for a bachelor’s degree.

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• SB 1310:
  Substitution of Work Experience for Postsecondary Education Requirements
• A public employer may include a postsecondary degree as a baseline requirement only as an alternative to the number of direct experience required, not to exceed:
• (a) Two years of direct experience for an…