Principal Data Engineer

Teachstone is seeking a Principal Data Engineer and Data Governance Lead with expertise in Snowflake and Master Data Management. This role is essential for unifying data across various platforms, establishing governance practices, and leading the data and reporting team to deliver impactful insights.

Responsibilities:

• Design, build, and maintain high-performance ELT/ETL pipelines into Snowflake across Enterprise systems
• Architect optimized Snowflake schemas, warehouses, and data models that support analytics, forecasting, and operational workflows
• Build scalable transformation logic using SQL, Python, dbt, and other modern data tools
• Own and lead Teachstone’s data governance framework, including standards, policies, operating cadences, and decision rights
• Define and maintain canonical enterprise data models for accounts, customers, products, segments, and lifecycle stages
• Establish and enforce field definitions, naming conventions, data lineage, and documentation standards
• Lead cross-system deduplication, normalization, and data quality initiatives
• Chair or co-lead an enterprise data governance council, driving alignment across Growth, Delivery, CS, Finance, and Product
• Ensure governance practices are practical, adopted, and embedded into day-to-day workflows—not theoretical
• Manage and develop the data engineering and reporting team, including analysts and analytics engineers as applicable
• Set clear priorities, standards, and delivery expectations for data pipelines, dashboards, and reporting outputs
• Balance short-term reporting needs with long-term platform and governance maturity
• Coach team members on best practices in data modeling, governance, and stakeholder partnership
• Establish sustainable operating rhythms for intake, prioritization, and delivery of data work
• Implement validation frameworks to monitor data accuracy, completeness, and consistency
• Develop automated error detection, alerting, and traceability for critical pipelines
• Ensure adherence to performance, privacy, and compliance requirements
• Partner with Growth, CS, Delivery, Product, Marketing, and Finance to translate business needs into governed, scalable data solutions
• Coach non-technical stakeholders on data ownership, stewardship, and responsible data practices
• Help leaders understand how upstream data decisions affect downstream reporting, metrics, and AI use cases
• Operate effectively within a matrixed organization with shared ownership and competing priorities
• Optimize Snowflake compute usage, storage strategies, and query performance
• Evaluate emerging tools and technologies to strengthen the data platform
• Support long-term modernization, including real-time ingestion, event-driven pipelines, and AI/ML enablement

Requirements:

• 10+ years of experience in data engineering, including people leadership or functional leadership of data/reporting teams
• 4+ years of hands-on Snowflake experience (RBAC, warehouse design, performance tuning, cost management)
• Snowflake certification required
• Advanced SQL and proficiency in Python or another data-oriented language
• Experience with dbt, Matillion, Fivetran, Airflow, Prefect, or similar tools
• Experience leading analytics engineering or enterprise reporting functions
• Demonstrated familiarity with semantic layers and AI/ML-enabled analytics
• Demonstrated experience designing and leading data governance and MDM initiatives
• Strong communication skills with the ability to influence technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Comfort operating in a matrixed organization
• Experience in SaaS, education, or services-based delivery environments
• Prior participation in enterprise data strategy or governance council