Data Engineer

About Niche

Niche is the leader in school search. Our mission is to make researching and enrolling in schools easy, transparent, and free. With in-depth profiles on every school and college in America, 140 million reviews and ratings, and powerful search tools, we help millions of people find the right school for them. We also help thousands of schools recruit more best-fit students, by highlighting what makes them great and making it easier to visit and apply.

Niche is all about finding where you belong, and that mission inspires how we operate every day. We want Niche to be a place where people truly enjoy working and can thrive professionally.

About The Role

We are looking for a skilled Data Engineer to join the Data Engineering team. You’ll build and support data pipelines that can handle the volume and complexity of data while ensuring scale, data accuracy, availability, observability, security, and optimum performance. You’ll be developing and maintaining data warehouse tables, views, and models, for consumption by analysts and downstream applications. This is an exciting opportunity to join our team as we’re building the next generation of our data platform, and engineering capabilities. You’ll be reporting to the Manager, Data Engineering (Core).

What You Will Do

• Design, build, and maintain scalable, secure data pipelines that ensure data accuracy, availability, and performance
• Develop and support data models, warehouse tables, and views for analysts and downstream applications
• Ensure observability and quality through monitoring, lineage tracking, and alerting systems
• Implement and maintain core data infrastructure and tooling (e.g., dbt Cloud, Airflow, RudderStack, cloud storage)
• Collaborate cross-functionally with analysts, engineers, and product teams to enable efficient data use
• Integrate governance and security controls such as access management and cost visibility
• Contribute to platform evolution and developer enablement through reusable frameworks, automation, and documentation
  
  

During the First Month:

• Learn about Niche by meeting with various team members to learn more about our company through our Onboarding meetings
• Build relationships with data engineering  team members, understand the day to day operating model, and stakeholders that we interact with on a daily basis
• Start to learn about our data platform infrastructure, data pipelines, source systems, and inter-dependencies
• Start participating in standups, planning, and retrospective meetings
• Start delivering on assigned sprint stories and show progress through completed tasks that contribute to team goals

Within 3 Months:

• Start delivering on assigned data engineering tasks to support our day to day, and roadmap
• Start troubleshooting production issues, and participating in on-call activities
• Identify areas for improving data engineering processes, and share with the team

Within 6 Months:

• Contribute consistently towards building our data platform, which includes data pipelines, and data warehouse layers
• Start to independently own workstreams whether it is periodic data engineering activities, or work items in support of our roadmap
• Deepen your understanding, and build subject matter expertise of our data & ecosystem
  

Within 12 Months:

• Your contributions have led to us making significant progress in implementing the data platform strategy, and key data initiatives to support the company's growth
• You’ve established yourself as a key team member with subject matter expertise within data engineering

What We Are Looking For

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Information Systems, or  a related field
• 3-5 years of experience in data engineering
• Demonstrated experience of building, and supporting large scale data pipelines - streaming and batch processing
• Software engineering mindset, leading with the principles of source control, infrastructure as code, testing, modularity, automation, CI/CD, and observability
• Proficiency in Python, SQL, Snowflake, Postgres, DBT, Airflow, Docker, Kubernetes, Kafka
• Experience of working with Google Analytics, Marketing, Ad & Social media platform, CRM/Salesforce, and JSON data; Government datasets, and geo-spatial data will be a plus
• Knowledge and understanding of the modern data platform, and its key components - ingestion, transformation, curation, quality, governance, and delivery
• Knowledge of data modeling techniques (3NF, Dimensional, Vault)
• Self-starter, analytical problem solver, highly attentive to detail, effective communicator, and obsessed with good documentation

Compensation 

Our national target base salary range is $93,000-$116,000, plus participation in our Annual Bonus and Stock Option Program. Base compensation will be commensurate with experience and skills.

At Niche, our Total Rewards Philosophy is centered around creating a workplace environment that attracts, motivates, and retains top talent by providing a comprehensive and competitive rewards package.  This philosophy is built on the principles of performance-based compensation, best-in-class benefits and work-life balance, and employee well-being.

Interview Process

Candidate experience is a top priority for our talent and hiring teams.  We believe in providing a transparent, authentic and comprehensive interview process where you have the opportunity to learn about us while we get to know you and your experience.  The interview process is outlined here:

• Phone Screen with Talent Acquisition Partner - 30 Minutes

• Video Interview with Hiring Manager - 45 Minutes 

• Team Interview - 3 Interviews, 45 Minutes Each

• Leadership Interview - 60 Minutes

Why Niche?

• We are a fully flexible workforce empowering our employees to choose to work remotely, in our Pittsburgh office or whatever combination suits you
• Full time, salaried position with competitive compensation in a fast-growing company
• Best-in-class 100% paid employee health plan, including vision and dental and supplemental coverage
• Flexible Paid Time Off Policy
• Stipend that allows you to build your work from home office in a style and function that suits your personal preferences
• Parental leave for all employees (12 weeks fully paid) in addition to short term disability for birthing parents
• Meaningful 401(k) with employer match
• Your ideas and work will make an immediate impact on our company and millions of users
• You will join a team that cares about you, our mission, our work - and celebrates our wins together!

Niche will only employ those who are legally authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship now or in the future for this opening.  

We are currently hiring in states where we currently have employees: AZ, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, MO, NE, NV, NH, NJ, NY, NC, OH, OK, OR, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA, WA, DC, WV.

Candidates only.  No recruiters or agencies, please. Sorry, we do not offer relocation assistance.

Niche is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering an inclusive, innovative environment with the best employees. Therefore, we provide employment opportunities without regard to age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or any other protected status in accordance with applicable law.

All interviews are being held remotely. If there are preparations we can make to help ensure you have a comfortable and positive interview experience, please let us know.