Analytics Engineer

POSITION SUMMARY

As an Analytics Engineer on Inspire’s Data Platforms and Services team, you will create clarity for cross-functional teams by delivering critical data for decision-making and drive success by designing, optimizing, and refining sources of truth that produce actionable metrics and insights about customers, sales activity, and energy markets. We take a product-driven, agile approach to our platform, driving measurable growth and meaningful outcomes every single sprint. We build efficient, scalable processes in a service-oriented ecosystem leveraging powerful code frameworks and repeatable patterns to solve real problems for stakeholders and customers.

THE ANALYTICS ENGINEER HAS FOUR MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES

1. Database and query optimization in SQL
2. Data processing and task management in Python
3. Technical communication, translating between domains with other engineering teams and non-engineering stakeholders
4. Team-oriented development: building modular & re-usable tools, writing maintainable code, owning technical and business documentation

SOME YEAR 1 DELIVERABLES

• Optimize performance of specific database structures, queries and reports to improve end user experience & efficiency
• Work closely with analysts, engineers and business stakeholders to understand needs and orient data to solving problems
• Leverage powerful frameworks and coding tools in cutting-edge cloud data warehouses to improve overall database performance and reliability
• Create and maintain documentation for datasets and processes that improve transparency of logic and sources behind key metrics

SUCCESS METRICS

• Improved performance of specific database models, Tableau reports, and queries as measured by execution and by loading times
• Improved performance of warehouse as a whole, as measured by scheduled job performance, average query execution, and average report loading times
• Delivery of high-quality pull requests in dbt, evidencing strong code standards & testing practices
• Positive interactions with department stakeholders: can offer feedback on priorities, status, and estimates that create transparency and build trust.

DESIRED TRAITS

• Service-oriented — Passionate about helping others and about unlocking deeper understanding and greater potential in the peers with whom they work. Motivated by the impact of their contributions on our product and operations. Inspired by lessening “pain points” by delivering highly accessible documentation, optimized processes, mentorship, and efficient & empathetic communication.
• Problem-Solving Mentality — Gets excited about digging into complexity, wants to ask questions and learn more, and isn’t put off by problems they’ve never been told explicitly how to solve. Especially adept at troubleshooting: able to break down a chain of steps to narrow down and to locate a problem. Practices a growth mindset and a curiosity to consider more than one source of solution or strategy.
• Number Sense — Strong background in mathematics or physics, comfort with quantitative measurement and estimation. Ability to work to establish boundaries, orders-of-magnitude, and uncertainties to make informed judgements without fussing over exactitude: knows when to and how to “back-of-the-envelope”.
• Big-picture awareness — Understanding of the importance of context, ability/willingness to understand the business problem in addition to the technical one. Focus on people & impact. Identify shortcuts & justify appropriate level-of-effort. Pre-emptive identification of potential issues downstream and proactive communication of such.

EXPERIENCE

• Must Have
  • SQL experience working with and optimizing complex queries on large datasets
  • Experience writing code in Python 3 with comprehensive documentation and testing
  • Experience with Tableau or similar reporting tools
  • Proficiency on a command line, including processing data samples
  • Software development lifecycle experience in GitHub (e.g. code review, testing, deployment)
• Nice to Have
  • Experience with key technologies: Snowflake, dbt, Airflow
  • Experience at a similar scale of data processing (Multi-TB/billions of rows)
  • Experience with containerized development using Docker, Kubernetes
  • Experience with delivering technical communication to audiences of diverse backgrounds