Senior Data Platform Engineer

Job Summary

As an IT Senior Data Platform Engineer at Fischer Homes, you will serve as the technical owner of our enterprise data platform, ensuring the performance, availability, security, and modernization of our SQL Server and cloud database environments. This role blends hands‑on database administration, cloud engineering, automation, and cross‑functional collaboration to support mission‑critical systems and analytics initiatives.

This position is 100% onsite, day 1 in our Erlanger, KY office.

• Communicate effectively with developers, infrastructure teams, analytics partners, and business stakeholders to deliver secure, scalable data solutions.
• Take ownership of production reliability and proactively prevent issues through monitoring, automation, and strong operational standards.
• Analyze incidents to root cause and implement long‑term, automated solutions to eliminate repeat failures.
• Adapt quickly to evolving technologies and cloud platforms while maintaining operational stability.
• Lead modernization initiatives with a strategic mindset while remaining hands‑on in technical execution.

• Administer, optimize, and maintain Microsoft SQL Server environments including performance tuning, indexing, patching, capacity planning, and HA/DR design.
• Design, implement, and routinely test backup/restore and disaster recovery capabilities.
• Lead the transition from self‑managed SQL Server environments to managed cloud database services such as Amazon RDS for SQL Server and Azure SQL Managed Instance.
• Build proactive monitoring, alerting, and observability standards across SQL Server, SSIS, Azure Data Factory, and cloud services.
• Implement database security best practices including least privilege access, encryption, credential management, and auditing controls.
• Drive scripting and automation initiatives using Power Shell and/or Python to standardize provisioning and operational processes.
• Partner with Infrastructure on infrastructure‑as‑code (IaC), governance guardrails (RBAC, logging, tagging), and CI/CD‑enabled database deployments.
• Modernize data movement patterns, including CDC and incremental ingestion strategies, to enable scalable downstream analytics (e.g., Microsoft Fabric/One Lake).
• Standardize ETL/ELT practices with strong logging, monitoring, retries, and documentation.
• Lead incident response, root cause analysis, and postmortem documentation to reduce operational risk.
• Support secure SaaS/vendor integrations and collaborate across Application Development, Analytics, HR, Finance, and Operations.

• 6+ years of hands‑on Microsoft SQL Server administration experience in production environments, including performance tuning, HA/DR, and backup/restore.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience supporting SQL Server in AWS and/or Azure environments, including networking and identity fundamentals.
• Strong SQL expertise with the ability to partner with developers on schema optimization and query performance improvements.
• Strong scripting and automation experience using Power Shell and/or Python.
• Demonstrated experience building monitoring, alerting, and incident response processes.

• Experience with managed database services such as Amazon RDS for SQL Server and/or Azure SQL Managed Instance.
• Experience with SSIS, Azure Data Factory, or similar data orchestration tools.
• Experience with infrastructure‑as‑code and CI/CD workflows.
• Experience designing CDC/incremental ingestion patterns for analytics or lakehouse platforms.
• Familiarity with SLOs/SLIs, operational runbooks, change management, and postmortem practices.
• Understanding of AI/ML fundamentals and experience supporting AI‑enabled data workloads in enterprise environments.

• Must have use of sensory skills to effectively communicate and interact with other employees and the public through use of the telephone and face‑to‑face contact.
• Must have the capability to effectively use and operate various items of office‑related equipment such as but not limited to the computer,…