Lead BI Engineer

About the role

You will be the founding BI Engineer at Altana, responsible for building the analytical infrastructure that enables data-driven decision-making across the entire company.

Responsibilities

• Build the BI Foundation
• Design and implement a scalable analytics data warehouse (or lakehouse) layer on top of Altana’s existing data infrastructure.
• Define the canonical dimensional model: facts, dimensions, conformed keys, and slowly changing dimensions for core business entities (customers, transactions, subscriptions, product usage, pipeline).
• Stand up and own the transformation layer (e.g., dbt) with version control, CI/CD testing, and documentation standards from day one.
• Establish a semantic/metrics layer so that “revenue,” “active customer,” and “retention” mean exactly one thing company-wide.
• Deliver Insight at Scale
• Create self-service datasets and exploration environments so that PMs, GTM leads, and finance can answer their own questions without filing a ticket.
• Own data quality monitoring, alerting, and incident response for the BI layer.
• Partner Across the Business
• Act as the embedded analytics thought partner for engineering leadership, product, sales, CS, and finance—translating business context into data requirements and vice versa.
• Proactively identify trends, anomalies, and opportunities in the data; surface them before anyone asks.
• Drive alignment on KPI definitions, measurement methodology, and reporting cadences.
• Set the Technical Direction
• Evaluate and recommend the BI tooling stack (visualization, orchestration, cataloging, observability) with an eye toward total cost of ownership and long-term maintainability while re-using infrastructure and tooling already part of the larger stack.
• Write the playbook: style guides, naming conventions, PR review standards, and on-call expectations for the BI function.
• Hire, mentor, and grow the BI team as demand scales.

Qualifications

• Must-Haves
• 7+ years of professional experience in analytics engineering, BI engineering, or a closely related data discipline.
• Deep fluency in SQL and at least one transformation framework (dbt strongly preferred).
• Strong dimensional modeling skills: star/snowflake schemas, conformed dimensions, incremental loading patterns.
• Production experience operating a modern lakehouse stack (e.g., Snowflake/BigQuery/ Databricks), including transformation tooling (dbt or DLT) and a BI layer (Looker, Tableau, or Sigma).
• Track record of defining and shipping company-wide KPI frameworks and executive dashboards.
• Comfort working in ambiguity: you have built a BI function (or a significant new workstream within one) from scratch before.
• Excellent communication skills—you can explain a data model to an engineer and a retention curve to a CRO with equal clarity.
• Nice-to-Haves
• Experience with Python for data pipelines, scripting, or lightweight ML/statistical analysis.
• Familiarity with SaaS business models and metrics (ARR, NRR, logo vs. dollar churn, cohort analysis).
• Exposure to supply chain, trade compliance, or government contracting domains.
• Experience with data cataloging or governance tools (e.g., Atlan, DataHub, Monte Carlo).
• Prior experience as the first or founding analytics hire at a growth-stage company.

Pay

US Salary Range and Benefits
$180,000- $210,000 USD

Benefits

• Flexible Time Off
• Paid Parental Leave
• Health Benefits
• Supplemental Benefits
• 401(k) Savings
• Commuter Benefits
• Wellness
• Pet Insurance
• Employee Assistance Program
• Dependent Care FSA

Values

Trust: Our customers and partners entrust us with missions of the highest importance. We honor that by keeping our word, meeting commitments, and ensuring every action we take reinforces confidence in us. We rely on each other to deliver, to speak openly, and to hold ourselves accountable.
Resilience: In a world of uncertainty and complexity, our work must withstand challenges, evolve with conditions, and ensure reliability over time. Resilience is both how we operate and what we deliver. It’s how we respond when things don’t go to plan –– we adapt, we support each other, and we keep moving forward.
Stewardship: We are stewards of every mission we touch. Because our work impacts lives and futures, we hold ourselves accountable to delivering mission impact and never compromising. Our responsibility extends beyond individual projects to the broader system of global trade. We believe that stewardship starts from within so that we can bring focus, creativity, and excellence to our work. Each of us is personally responsible for fostering a workplace where people can thrive. And we are stewards of the greater good of the company. By holding ourselves and each other accountable, we build a culture of innovation and collective success that reflects the scale of our mission.
Courage: Courage is what unlocks the seemingly impossible for our customers. It’s the core value that drives us make bold moves and take on big, complicated network problems—the ones others avoid. We know success isn't guaranteed, but we have the audacious vision to believe a solution is possible and to build it. Courage fuels our growth mindset. It means embracing challenges that make us stronger, and it’s demonstrated by how we approach hard conversations and complex projects.