Data Engineer - DataOps

We are seeking a capable, detail-minded Data Engineer with a strong DataOps focus to join our team. In this role, you will be embedded at Monks, serving as a critical delivery partner dedicated to supporting one of our most prestigious, high-profile global client accounts in Cupertino, CA. You will build, scale, and maintain the core data pipelines that deliver trusted sell-through, actuals, and strategic business data to global Sales & Finance leadership.

About the role

This is a contract role based out of Cupertino, CA, with a hybrid schedule requiring you to be on-site 3 days per week (Tuesday – Thursday).

Beyond building your own pipelines, you will play a crucial role in hardening, monitoring, and troubleshooting the team's shared pipeline estate—ensuring high reliability, data quality, and platform performance across production.

Responsibilities

• Hands-On Data Engineering
  • Build & Enhance Pipelines: Develop and maintain efficient ingestion and transformation pipelines from diverse, variable-quality data sources into curated aggregation layers, virtual views, and incremental-refresh logic.
  • Workflow Orchestration: Own the code, business logic, and operational health (SLIs/SLOs) of your data products using Apache Airflow to orchestrate, schedule, and monitor workflows.
  • Reusable Architecture: Contribute to and leverage shared utility libraries, local validation practices, and scalable coding patterns across the data engineering team.
• DataOps & Shared Platform Reliability
  • DAG Hardening & Resilience: Drive platform-wide reliability by improving preflight cleanup, downstream-refresh stability, table/storage optimization, and failure-alerting flows across shared pipelines.
  • Automated Data Quality & Observability: Design and deploy automated Data-Quality Checks (DQCs), custom monitoring pipelines, and troubleshooting tooling that the broader analytics team relies on.
  • Platform Governance: Manage asset lifecycles (retiring unused objects), remediate poorly performing queries, optimize materialized reflections, and support engine/orchestrator version migrations.
  • Incident Response & Change Management: Own production incident response for assigned domain areas, author clear structured change plans and Root Cause Analyses (RCAs), and maintain operational runbooks.

Requirements

• 5+ years of Data Engineering experience (or Software Engineering with a strong data focus) accompanied by expert-level SQL.
• Core Tech Stack: Advanced proficiency in Python (Java or Scala is a plus), paired with hands-on experience using Airflow, Spark, Trino/Dremio, Apache Iceberg, Kafka, and Docker.
• DataOps & Lakehouse Expertise: Experience with lakehouse architectures, query engines, Apache Iceberg maintenance (compaction, snapshot management), and platform upgrade/migration workflows.
• Production Pipeline Management: Proven track record designing, deploying, and maintaining custom ETL/ELT pipelines and enterprise data warehouse solutions using version control (Git) and CI/CD pipelines.
• Data Domain Context: Prior experience working with Sales, Finance, or supply chain data domains (e.g., actuals, sell-through, forecasting) is highly preferred.

Skills

• Root-Cause Investigator: You don't just apply quick patches—you independently troubleshoot shared production issues, trace anomalies back to their upstream source, and implement durable, long-term fixes.
• Operational Discipline: You hold high standards for software lifecycle best practices, rigorous separation of dev and prod environments, careful change management, and comprehensive documentation.
• Platform Ownership: You take pride in data quality and system reliability across the entire team's pipeline estate, not just the code you personally authored.
• Autonomous & Adaptable: Comfortable stepping into ambiguous technical challenges, navigating complex data environments, and driving solutions to completion with minimal oversight.

Benefits

• Excellent, full coverage medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Generous PTO and 15 company-wide holidays
• 401k with company contribution
• Paid parental leave
• Work-life balance with an emphasis on personal well-being
• Career growth in a disruptor space & entrepreneurial opportunities within the Monks network
• A globally diverse & inclusive culture with employee resource groups such as S4 Melanin, Pride.Monks, Cultura.Monks, and more
• Authentic commitment to DEI efforts and sustainable growth

Pay

Salary Range: $130,000—$150,000 USD

Schedule

Hybrid schedule requiring you to be on-site 3 days per week (Tuesday – Thursday).

About Monks

Monks is the global, digital-first, data-driven, unitary operating brand of S4 Capital plc. With a legacy of innovation and specialized expertise, Monks combines an extraordinary range of global Marketing and Technology Services to redefine how brands interact with the world. Through Monks.Flow, its flagship AI ecosystem for marketing orchestration, Monks transforms marketing into a growth engine, collapsing timelines and connecting brands to culture in real time.

By deploying bespoke intelligent agents across disciplines and delivering culturally relevant, high-impact creative and digital solutions, Monks solves key critical business challenges across the entire brand enterprise to help brands sustain long-term impact. Monks was named a Contender in The Forrester Wave™: Global Marketing Services, ranks among Cannes Lions' Top 10 Creative Companies (2022-25) and remains the only partner featured in AdExchanger’s Programmatic Power Players list every year (2020-24). Named Adweek’s first AI Agency of the Year (2023) and The One Show’s inaugural AI Pioneer Organization, Monks was also awarded Business Intelligence Group’s 2025 Excellence in Artificial Intelligence Award in both the Organizational and AI Product categories.

As a trusted partner to cutting-edge innovators in tech, Monks earned titles such as Optimizely Experimentation Partner of the Year (2025), runner-up for the Adobe Firefly Partner Award (2024), and Workato’s AI Visionary Customer Impact Award (2024). Additionally, Monks achieved a record-breaking number of FWAs and continues to hold the most of any partner.