Senior Data Engineer

Join one of Baltimore's Best Places to Work!

About the Role

The Banner is seeking an experienced and hands-on Senior Data Engineer to help scale and mature our modern cloud-based data platform as we expand operations through the acquisition and integration of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. This is a high-impact role focused on building scalable data pipelines, establishing strong data governance and engineering practices, and enabling trusted analytics across editorial, subscriptions, audience engagement, advertising, philanthropy, finance, and operations.

You will play a critical role in consolidating fragmented reporting systems into a centralized, cloud-native data ecosystem. Your work will help leaders and teams make faster, more informed decisions through reliable, accessible, and well-governed data.

The ideal candidate is both a strong technical engineer and a pragmatic systems thinker. You are comfortable working across business and technical teams, designing sustainable data foundations, and solving complex problems in a fast-moving digital media environment.

What You’ll Do

 Data Platform and Pipeline Engineering

• Design, build, and maintain scalable batch and near-real-time data pipelines on AWS.
• Develop robust ETL and ELT workflows that integrate data from multiple operational systems.
• Expand and evolve our existing AWS-based data lake architecture to support multi-organization analytics and reporting.
• Standardize ingestion, transformation, modeling, and serving layers across acquired systems and platforms.
• Contribute to architecture decisions and long-term data platform strategy.
• Build reliable, reusable, and well-documented data assets that support analytics, reporting, and operational decision-making.

Acquisition and Systems Integration

• Lead data integration work related to Pittsburgh Post-Gazette systems and reporting infrastructure.
• Centralize fragmented reporting pipelines and migrate ad hoc reporting processes into governed, enterprise-grade workflows.
• Create scalable mechanisms for aligning KPIs, metrics, definitions, and operational reporting across organizations.
• Partner with technical and business teams to understand source systems, reporting needs, and integration priorities.
• Help establish a durable data foundation that supports organizational growth and future acquisitions or integrations.

Data Governance, Quality, and Reliability

• Establish data governance frameworks, lineage, quality checks, observability, and operational standards.
• Implement monitoring, alerting, validation, and recovery mechanisms for critical data pipelines.
• Improve data reliability, consistency, documentation, discoverability, and trust.
• Define and promote engineering best practices for data ingestion, transformation, testing, deployment, and maintenance.
• Identify and resolve data quality issues in partnership with analytics, technology, and business stakeholders.

Analytics Enablement

• Partner closely with analytics, product, editorial, marketing, subscriptions, advertising, philanthropy, finance, and operations teams.
• Enable high-quality dashboards and reporting through curated datasets, semantic models, and trusted data sources.
• Support Power BI reporting infrastructure and optimize downstream analytical workflows.
• Translate business needs into scalable data models and analytical solutions.
• Help teams across the organization use data more effectively, consistently, and confidently.

What You’ll Bring

• 10+ years of experience in data engineering, analytics engineering, backend engineering, or related data platform roles.
• Strong experience designing, building, and operating modern cloud-based data platforms on AWS.
• Strong experience building and orchestrating ETL and ELT pipelines at scale.
• Experience working with data lakes, data warehouses, lakehouse architectures, or similar cloud-native data ecosystems.
• Strong understanding of data governance, lineage, quality, observability, and reliability concepts.
• Experience supporting BI and analytics platforms, including Microsoft Power BI.
• Ability to design scalable data models and curated datasets that support reporting, analytics, and decision-making.
• Strong SQL skills and experience working with complex operational and analytical data sources.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to work directly with business stakeholders.
• Ability to balance technical rigor with practical execution in a fast-moving environment.
• A collaborative mindset and comfort working across technical, analytical, and non-technical teams.

Nice to Have

• Experience building enterprise data lakes or lakehouse architectures.
• Experience with media, publishing, subscription, advertising, audience analytics, or digital consumer product data.
• Experience integrating data from content management systems, subscription platforms, advertising systems, CRM systems, finance systems, or marketing platforms.
• Experience with modern data transformation, orchestration, observability, or cataloging tools.
• Experience supporting data migration, acquisition integration, or multi-organization reporting environments.
• Familiarity with data privacy, access controls, and governance practices in a complex organization.

What Success Looks Like

Success in this role means helping The Baltimore Banner build a trusted, scalable, and well-governed data ecosystem. You will improve the reliability of critical data pipelines, reduce fragmented reporting, enable stronger analytics, and help teams across the organization make better decisions with greater confidence. You will also help establish the data foundations needed to support organizational growth, operational integration, and the future of local journalism across multiple markets.

Salary Range: $150,000 - $170,000. Individual pay may vary from the target range and is determined by several factors, including experience, internal pay equity, and other relevant business considerations. This role is not eligible for corporate bonus opportunity. We constantly review all teammate pay to ensure a great compensation package that is fair and equitable across the board. 

Our amazing benefits include:  

• Flexible Paid Time Off 
• Retirement savings - 401K plan offered through Human Interest, with a company match 
• Student Loan Debt Repayment Assistance for qualified employees 
• Full health benefits - medical, dental, vision, prescription, FSA/HSA., and coverage for family/dependents 
• Sick Leave eligible for rollover  
• Commuter Benefits 
• 11 Paid National Holidays 
• Employee Assistance Program 
• Generous Parental Leave 
• Company paid access to a wellness platform to support mental, financial and physical wellbeing 

Our Core Values

• Do what’s right. Honesty, morality, respect and the mission guide our actions and decisions. By doing the right thing, we inspire others to believe. 
• Work together. We collaborate to create something special. Together we challenge assumptions, trust each other, take risks, and foster transparent and direct communication. 
• Listen to be heard. Our stories are trustworthy. They are inspired by and created for our readers. Their story is our story. Communities are at the center of our journalism, and everything we do. 
• Deliver impactful results. Acting as one accountable team and driven by an entrepreneurial spirit, we deliver bold and innovative results. We act fast, execute and learn. We celebrate great outcomes. 
• Be inclusive. We celebrate the uniqueness of each individual and act by curating a culture that leverages diverse perspectives as the key to fulfilling our mission. The Banner is for all of us. 

Why Join Us?

This is an opportunity to build technology that supports the future of local journalism.You will join a mission-driven organization that values high-quality journalism, civic impact, collaboration, and innovation. Your work will directly influence how readers experience The Banner every day - from breaking news and deeply reported stories to personalized updates and habit-forming mobile experiences. 

If you are excited by the chance to build excellent mobile products with a clear public-service mission, we’d love to hear from you. 

The Venetoulis Institute embraces diversity and inclusion, and we are wholeheartedly committed to being proactive in inspiring a culture of inclusion across our organization. We are dedicated to establishing an organization that reflects the fundamental respect for different ways of working and living, and we assure every employee the opportunity to reach their full potential.

We are dedicated to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities throughout the recruitment process. If you require accommodation due to a disability to participate in the application process, please contact  [email protected] to request accommodation. Reasonable accommodations may include, but are not limited to, adjustments in the application process, modifications or assistance regarding job interviews, and accommodations to enable access to our facilities. We appreciate the value that individuals with disabilities bring to our workforce and encourage applicants with disabilities to disclose their needs for accommodation to facilitate a smooth and inclusive recruitment experience.