[Remote] Lead Analytics Engineer

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Forward Financing is a financial technology company based in Boston, Massachusetts, focused on unlocking capital for small businesses across America. As a Lead Analytics Engineer, you will be responsible for setting architectural direction, owning complex initiatives, and mentoring team members while driving the data centralization vision and building an AI-ready data foundation.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical architecture and roadmap for our most complex Analytics Engineering initiatives - including semantic layer design, source-of-truth consolidation, and the data foundation for AI and agent-based use cases
• Architect Forward's semantic layer and metrics standards so key business KPIs are defined once, governed clearly, and consumed consistently across dashboards, models, AI agents, and downstream products
• Lead the technical design of the AI-ready data platform - making the modeling, metadata, and governance decisions that make Snowflake Intelligence and other AI/agent capabilities trustworthy, performant, and production-ready
• Drive technical excellence across our dbt project: model architecture, materialization and incremental strategies, performance tuning, macros, testing patterns, and CI/CD practices that scale as data volume and team size grow
• Set and uphold a high bar for craftsmanship across the team - defining standards for SQL style, modeling patterns, documentation, and data quality, and modeling those standards in your own work
• Mentor Senior and Analytics Engineers through hands-on code review, pairing, and design feedback - accelerating their growth into stronger technical contributors
• Partner with the Manager of Analytics Engineering on technical strategy, hiring, and roadmap planning - acting as a deputy for technical decisions and unblocking the team on the hardest problems
• Lead deep technical partnerships with Data Science, Data Engineering, and Core Technology - owning schema migrations, feature deployments, and streaming pipeline contributions where Analytics Engineering is on the critical path
• Evaluate and operationalize high-value third-party data sources and emerging tooling (e.g., Snowflake Cortex, semantic layer frameworks, observability tools) and make recommendations that elevate the platform
• Champion data governance and quality at the platform level - including dbt tests, lineage, cataloging, observability, and compliance with security and regulatory standards - so both stakeholders and AI systems can trust the numbers

Skills

• 6+ years of experience in Analytics Engineering, Data Engineering, or Business Intelligence, with a track record of leading complex, cross-cutting technical initiatives
• 4+ years of hands-on production experience with dbt, including advanced patterns such as incremental strategies, macros, custom tests, and CI/CD design
• 3+ years of deep experience with a cloud-based data warehouse (Snowflake strongly preferred), including performance tuning and cost optimization
• Expert-level proficiency in SQL and dimensional data modeling, with a portfolio of durable, well-tested models that have served as foundational layers for an organization
• Demonstrated experience designing and operating a semantic layer or metrics layer that serves as an organizational source of truth
• Proven ability to mentor senior engineers, lead architectural decisions, and influence direction across cross-functional teams
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills - able to drive technical alignment with both engineers and non-technical stakeholders
• Experience designing or contributing to AI/LLM-based applications backed by warehouse data (e.g., Snowflake Intelligence, Cortex, RAG, agent frameworks)
• Hands-on experience with Python for data scripting, automation, or framework development
• Familiarity with streaming/CDC pipelines (Streamkap, Fivetran, Kafka) and real-time analytics use cases
• Experience leading a data platform migration, large-scale refactor, or modeling-standards overhaul
• Experience in fintech, lending, or another regulated, data-intensive industry

Benefits

• 12% Bonus

Company Overview