Data Warehouse Engineer

About the Role

Thompson Hine LLP is seeking a Data Warehouse Engineer to join any of their Atlanta, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, or Minneapolis offices. This role focuses on developing high-quality data pipelines, a trusted Snowflake data warehouse, and well-modeled datasets to power analytics and decision-making.

Key Responsibilities

Pipeline Development

• Design, build, and maintain ingestion pipelines from source databases (SQL Server and other relational systems) into Snowflake, using batch and incremental or change-data-capture patterns.
• Integrate data from third-party SaaS platforms such as CRM, product analytics, and finance systems.
• Monitor pipeline runs, resolve failures, and set up alerting, logging, and data-quality checks.
• Document source-to-target mappings, refresh schedules, and dependencies.

Data Warehouse Design and Modeling

• Build and maintain a layered warehouse: raw (landing) tables, cleansed and transformed staging layers, and curated presentation layers.
• Write and optimize transformation logic in SQL, including slowly changing dimensions, surrogate keys, and late-arriving data.
• Design and deliver dimensional data marts and data cubes (star schemas, aggregates, semantic or OLAP models) for finance, operations, and other business groups.
• Partner with report developers and analysts to turn business requirements into well-defined, tested data products.

Snowflake Administration

• Manage warehouses, databases, schemas, and roles in line with least-privilege access and naming conventions.
• Tune performance and control cost: warehouse sizing, clustering, query profiling, and resource monitors.
• Support masking policies and other data-protection controls and promote changes from development to production through a controlled release process.

SQL Server Administration

• Manage a small environment of SQL Server instances: installation, patching, configuration, capacity planning, and security.
• Tune performance: indexing, statistics, query plans, wait-stat analysis, and blocking or deadlock resolution.
• Own backup and recovery: design backup schedules, verify backups, and perform point-in-time restores.
• Plan, document, and test disaster recovery, including high availability options such as Always On availability groups, log shipping, or failover clustering.
• Maintain SQL Agent jobs, maintenance plans, and monitoring.

Operations and Collaboration

• Keep runbooks, data dictionaries, and architecture diagrams current.
• Produce clear technical documentation, including pipeline designs and data flow diagrams.
• Follow change management and secure development practices and take part in on-call or after-hours support for critical loads and outages.
• Partner with analytics and business stakeholders to translate requirements into well-modeled, reliable datasets.

Requirements & Tech Stack

• SQL Server
• Snowflake
• SQL
• ETL or ELT tooling
• Scheduling or orchestration of data jobs
• Cloud data warehouse
• Dimensional modeling (Kimball)
• Source databases
• Relational systems
• SaaS platforms (CRM, product analytics, finance systems)
• OLAP models
• Always On availability groups, log shipping, or failover clustering
• dbt (preferred)
• Python (preferred)
• PowerShell (preferred)
• SSRS, Power BI (preferred)
• Snowflake SnowPro Core or Advanced certification (preferred)
• Microsoft SQL Server or Azure data certification (preferred)
• OWASP (preferred)
• Source control and CI/CD (preferred)

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Up to 5 years of experience in data engineering or data warehousing, including at least one warehouse built from scratch: raw tables, transformation layers, data marts, and data cubes.
• Strong SQL skills, including complex joins, window functions, CTEs, stored procedures, and performance tuning.
• Hands-on experience building and supporting data pipelines from source databases into a cloud data warehouse, preferably Snowflake.
• Working knowledge of dimensional modeling (Kimball), including fact and dimension design and slowly changing dimensions.
• 3+ years administering SQL Server in production: performance tuning, backup and restore, and disaster recovery planning and testing.
• Experience with ETL or ELT tooling and with scheduling or orchestration of data jobs.
• Ability to troubleshoot across systems, communicate clearly with technical and non-technical users, and document work thoroughly.
• Experience with legal or professional services data, such as practice management and billing systems like Aderant Expert. (preferred)
• Experience with SSRS, Power BI, or similar reporting tools, and with building semantic layers for them. (preferred)
• Experience with dbt, Python, or PowerShell for transformation, automation, and testing. (preferred)
• Familiarity with Snowflake features such as Streams, Tasks, Snowpipe, dynamic tables, role-based access control, and Cortex. (preferred)
• Knowledge of secure coding practices (such as OWASP) and of data governance, masking, and audit requirements for confidential client data. (preferred)
• Experience with source control and CI/CD for database and pipeline code. (preferred)

This position requires the employee to work onsite at a specified Thompson Hine office location.

Compensation is determined upon the market in which the position is located, the responsibilities of the position, the experience and skills of the applicant, and other job-related factors.