Data Platform Engineer

Location:

303 West Madison Street, Suite 1650, Chicago, IL 60606 / Hybrid (3-4 days in-office)

Experience:

1–5 years

We are seeking a Data Platform Engineer to support the development and productionization of internal data, analytics, reporting, and AI-enabled tools. This role will work closely with the Data Science function, Finance, and IT stakeholders to improve or rebuild backend services, maintain cloud-hosted databases, develop data pipelines, support Azure-based deployments, and help deliver trusted reporting capabilities using Power BI.

The ideal candidate is comfortable working across backend development, SQL databases, data integration, and cloud application infrastructure. This is a hands‑on engineering role for someone who wants to grow into data platform, backend, and cloud engineering responsibilities.

• Review and improve existing backend/data application infrastructure.
• Design, implement, and maintain relational database tables, schemas, views, stored procedures, and migrations. Refine existing database schemas, table structures, relationships, and indexing strategies.
• Develop data ingestion and transformation pipelines from financial and other internal business systems, APIs, spreadsheets, and structured documents.
• Experience supporting analytics, reporting, Power BI solutions, or internal business applications.
• Help establish governed, reusable data sources that support consistent financial, project, utilization, forecasting, and operational reporting.
• Familiarity with Microsoft Fabric, Snowflake, Databricks, Azure Synapse, or similar data warehouse/lakehouse platforms is a plus.
• Assist with CI/CD workflows, Git Hub Actions, branch‑based deployment processes, and troubleshooting failed builds.
• Implement logging, validation, error handling, and basic monitoring for internal tools.
• Collaborate with data science and AI engineering lead to convert prototypes into reliable internal applications.
• Document APIs, data models, pipeline logic, deployment steps, and operational procedures.
• Support integration with business systems such as project databases, document repositories, analytics dashboards, and AI workflow platforms.
• Help maintain dev/test/prod environment separation and support controlled releases.
• Support Azure-hosted application environments, including App Service, Static Web Apps, Azure SQL, Redis Cache, storage, environment variables, and deployment configuration.

• 1–5 years of experience in backend development, data engineering, software engineering, or a related technical role (internships/co‑ops count).
• Experience developing or supporting Power BI reports and dashboards, including Power Query, data modeling, DAX measures, and scheduled refreshes.
• Strong SQL skills, including schema design, joins, indexing concepts, and query optimization basics.
• Experience with Node.js and/or Python for backend services or data processing.
• Familiarity with REST APIs, JSON, authentication concepts, and server‑side application design.
• Experience with Git and collaborative development workflows.
• Exposure to cloud platforms, preferably Microsoft Azure.
• Ability to debug technical issues across database, backend, and deployment layers.
• Strong documentation habits and ability to communicate technical work clearly.
• Strong collaborative mindset, with the ability to communicate clearly, ask thoughtful questions, discuss technical tradeoffs, and work effectively with cross‑functional team members.

• Experience with Azure App Service, Azure SQL Database, Azure Static Web Apps, Azure Functions, or Azure Storage.
• Experience with FastAPI, Flask, Express, or similar backend frameworks.
• Experience with CI/CD tools such as Git Hub Actions or Azure Dev Ops.
• Familiarity with Prisma, SQL Alchemy, Alembic, or other ORM/migration tools.
• Basic frontend familiarity with React/Type Script is helpful but not required.
• Well‑developed interpersonal skills, owning problem to the end, and proud to share in team’s success.

At Walker Consultants, we are committed to maintaining fairness and equity in our pay practices. For this role, the estimated base…