Senior Data Engineer

Independence Pet Group•Chicago, IL

9h•Hybrid

About The Position

Established in 2021, Independence Pet Holdings (IPH) is a corporate holding company that manages a diverse and broad portfolio of modern pet health brands and services, including insurance, pet education, lost recovery services, and more throughout North America. We believe pet insurance is more than a financial product and build solutions to simplify the pet parenting journey and help improve the well-being of pets. As a leading authority in the pet category, we operate with a full stack of resources, capital, and services to support pet parents. Our multi-brand and omni-channel approach includes our own insurance carrier, insurance brands and partner brands. IDEA (IPH Data & Enterprise Analytics) is IPH’s enterprise data organization responsible for building and operating the data platform, governance framework, and analytics capabilities that power decision-making across all brands. The team brings together experienced data leaders and engineers from across IPH and beyond to create a unified, enterprise-scale data function. Organized around four core pillars—Data Strategy & Planning, Infrastructure & Data Engineering, Enterprise Data Governance, and Analytics & Reporting—IDEA partners with teams across the organization to architect, manage, and activate data & analytics so every IPH team can make faster, smarter, and more informed decisions. As a result, we are looking for a Senior Data Engineer to join the organization. The Senior Data Engineer will play a critical role in shaping IPH’s data ecosystem, building the platforms and pipelines that enable smarter decisions across analytics, product, and operations. This person will bring both technical excellence and a collaborative mindset, designing scalable, high-performance data solutions while ensuring reliability, quality, and accessibility. Ideal candidates have experience in pet insurance or other consumer-facing industries like e-commerce or subscription businesses and are passionate about translating complex business needs into actionable data solutions. Beyond coding and architecture, this role is about fostering strong partnerships across teams, mentoring peers, and championing best practices that make data engineering a force multiplier for the organization.

Requirements

6+ years building and scaling cloud-based data platforms and pipelines.
Strong Python and SQL expertise
Strong SQL and Python skills, with a focus on automation, performance, and reliability.
Experience with large-scale datasets, structured and unstructured
Hands-on experience with modern data stack tools (dbt, Airflow, Fivetran, Databricks) and streaming/event-driven systems (Kafka, Kinesis).
Solid experience with AWS data services and ELT/ETL workflows.
Proficiency in CI/CD, Git, and infrastructure-as-code.
Proven ability to lead projects, influence stakeholders, and mentor others.

Nice To Haves

Experience designing data platforms at scale in a high-growth or startup environment.
Familiarity with customer-centric tools like Segment, Stripe, Salesforce, or mParticle
Experience supporting analytics, machine learning, or personalization initiatives with robust data foundations.
Knowledge of data privacy and compliance best practices (e.g., GDPR, CCPA).
Prior contributions to open-source projects, internal data tooling, or technical blogs/presentations.

Responsibilities

Design, build, and scale cloud-based data platforms and pipelines (batch and streaming) to support analytics, product, and operational use cases.
Own critical data workflows, ensuring reliability, performance, and quality across the data ecosystem.
Implement modern data solutions using tools like dbt, Databricks, ELT frameworks, and other cloud platforms (AWS, Snowflake).
Apply best practices in CI/CD, Git, testing, monitoring, and infrastructure-as-code.
Collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams, balancing technical rigor with strong interpersonal skills to translate business needs into scalable, accessible data solutions.
Lead technical initiatives with empathy and influence, mentoring team members, fostering trust, and promoting shared standards and engineering excellence.