Data Engineer

About Inroads

Inroads applies data, analytics, technology, research, and content development to co-create services and programs that are personalized, relevant, and engaging for the communities who rely on them. Our deep understanding of digital services, policy implementation, and ways communities consume information allows us to seamlessly integrate with organizations and public sector teams to revolutionize the ways they deliver complex services at scale.

We’re hiring an entry-level Data Engineer to join our Data Engineering team. You’ll take ownership of building reliable ELT/ETL pipelines and strong analytical data models using dbt. You don’t need to know everything on day one, but you must be eager to learn, experiment, and grow quickly. Experience with Airflow and Snowflake is a plus, but not required.

• Build, test, and document dbt models (staging, intermediate, marts) aligned to Kimball dimensional modeling best practices.
• Implement data quality checks (dbt tests, sources, freshness) and contribute to monitoring data reliability.
• Collaborate with analytics, product, and domain stakeholders to translate business needs into well-modeled datasets.
• Proactively audit, define, and standardize key business metrics in collaboration with stakeholders to ensure consistency and trust across reporting platforms.
• Support source onboarding and ingestion from APIs, files, or databases into the warehouse.
• Maintain clear documentation for datasets, lineage, and transformation logic.
• Assist with CI/CD for analytics code (Git workflows, PR reviews, environments).
• Optimize model performance (incremental strategies, partitions/clustering, query tuning).
• Troubleshoot pipeline/data issues and contribute to root-cause analyses.
• Proactively identify improvement opportunities and drive them to completion with high ownership.

• 2 years of experience in data engineering, analytics engineering, or related field (internships, coursework, and projects encouraged) OR an undergraduate degree or higher in a related field
• Proficiency in SQL; able to write clean, performant queries.
• Practical experience with dbt (models, tests, documentation, sources; familiarity with Jinja/macros is a plus).
• Solid grasp of Kimball dimensional modeling (star/snowflake schemas, facts and dimensions, SCDs).
• Demonstrated ability to translate complex business logic into efficient, technical data structures.
• Understanding of data warehousing and ELT/ETL patterns.
• Familiarity with Git and collaborative development workflows.
• Strong problem-solving and communication skills; attention to detail.
• Demonstrated willingness to learn quickly and take ownership of outcomes.

• Workflow orchestration experience (Airflow, Dagster, Prefect).
• Cloud data warehouse exposure (Snowflake preferred).
• Basic Python skills for data tasks (ETL scripts, API integrations).
• Experience with data testing/observability tools and lineage documentation.
• Experience designing and implementing data models specifically for consumption by internal technical teams (Data Analysts, Data Scientists).
• Exposure to CI/CD for analytics (dbt Cloud/Jobs, Git Hub Actions).
• Domain knowledge of the U.S. healthcare insurance marketplace (Healthcare.gov) data and metrics.

• Bias for action: you establish clear goals, participate in problem-solving efforts, and take ownership of the outcomes.
• Growth mindset: you learn new tools and concepts rapidly and share learnings with the team.
• Craftsmanship: you care about clean code, tests, documentation, and reproducibility.
• Collaboration:
  
  you give and receive constructive feedback and help raise the bar.

• Delivers well-tested, documented dbt models that meet stakeholder needs.
• Improves data reliability through effective testing and monitoring.
• Demonstrates ownership by driving initiatives from problem definition to solution.
• Learns and applies new concepts (tools, modeling patterns, domain context) quickly.

Inroads offers a friendly work environment and competitive compensation and benefits package including:

• Salary: $85,000
• Premier health, dental, and vision…