Lead Data Platform Engineer

About Us

Virtuous is on a mission to inspire global generosity by helping nonprofits build better relationships with their donors. We offer a modern software platform that provides mid-sized charities with elegant tools for fundraising, marketing, volunteerism, and online giving. Our talented team is driven to disrupt the status quo in the nonprofit sector. We are hungry, humble, and committed to delivering best-in-class software solutions, customer success interactions, and sales experiences to the world’s leading nonprofits. We also recognize the importance of giving back and making a difference in the communities where we live and work. That's why we practice radical generosity by volunteering at nonprofits or going the extra mile for our team and the customers we serve. We take our work seriously, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. We believe that life is too short not to love what you do.

Position Summary

Virtuous is evolving its data platform into an AI-ready foundation that powers trusted decision-making and self-service analytics across the company. We’re hiring a Lead Data Platform Engineer to design, build, and own the systems that power our data ecosystem. This role is ideal for a highly motivated self-starter who is comfortable with ambiguity and thrives at the intersection of systems design, business semantics, and AI enablement.

What You'll Build & Own

• Own the evolution of Virtuous’s data platform, primarily on Snowflake and dbt, as a secure, scalable, and AI-ready system.
• Design data models, metadata, and access patterns that support natural-language querying and AI-assisted analysis.
• Partner with Data Operations and Teams across the company to ensure data structures are accurate, reusable, and aligned with business definitions.
• Prepare data foundations that allow AI tools to deliver consistent, timely, and trustworthy answers.
• Ensure AI systems access data exclusively through governed service accounts and role-scoped permissions, with query activity auditable and restricted according to enterprise data classification and access standards.
• Access, Trust & Governance by Design:
  • Architect and implement role-based access controls within Snowflake and related data systems (including row- and column-level security).
  • Translate approved enterprise access and compliance policies into enforceable platform-level controls.
  • Maintain technical configurations to ensure ongoing alignment with those standards.
  • Ensure all platform-level access controls integrate with the enterprise identity provider (SSO, SCIM, role lifecycle management).
  • Support periodic access reviews and control validation processes in coordination with Security and Compliance teams.
• Platform Leverage & Standards:
  • Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines, testing strategies, and deployment patterns for dbt and Snowflake.
  • Design deployment, testing, and validation patterns that make accuracy the default.
  • Establish platform standards, templates, and best practices that enable others to move faster without sacrificing quality or security.
  • Increase the amount of trusted work the organization can do without increasing Data Ops involvement.
  • Reduce ad hoc work by building reusable systems and guardrails.
  • Act as a technical leader and thought partner across data-related initiatives.
• Reliability, Cost & Performance:
  • Own Snowflake warehouse strategy, resource governance, and cost optimization.
  • Continuously improve performance, scalability, and reliability across the data platform.
  • Identify and eliminate inefficiencies that increase cost, risk, or operational overhead.
  • Collaborate with IT and Cloud Engineering to ensure Snowflake networking, storage integrations, and data movement patterns align with enterprise cloud security baselines, network segmentation standards, and infrastructure governance policies.

Who This Role Is For

Care about leverage, durability, and outcomes — not just shipping artifacts. Think deeply about how AI and automation change the role of data platforms. Are highly self-directed and motivated, and take pride in ownership. Thrive in ambiguity and are comfortable making decisions with incomplete information. Are motivated by leverage, correctness, and long-term impact — not ticket volume or titles. Readily navigate cross-functional tradeoffs to build shared data foundations that serve the whole company, not individual teams.

What We Offer

• Market competitive pay leveraging Carta data
• Employee recognition through Bonusly (birthdays, anniversaries, achievements, etc.)
• 401(k) retirement plan with company matching - 50% match up to 6% of compensation after 90 days
• Supportive time off including paid volunteer days and company holidays
• Employer-contributed healthcare benefits, encompassing medical, dental, and vision coverage, with plans available for dependents and choices for Health Savings Accounts (HSA) and Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA).
• 12 weeks primary parent leave, 4 weeks secondary parent leave - full pay (adoption as well)