Location: Calgary, AB

Work Environment: 4 days in-office

Position Type: Full-time, Permanent

Salary: Up to $150,000 base + benefits

Position Overview

Hammehr invites applications for the role of Senior Data Engineer on behalf of our client for a full-time permanent opportunity. This role is about building a cloud-native data platform that doesn't just collect and store - it serves real users, real decisions, and real-time expectations. In the first six months, success looks like reliable pipelines and clearer lineage.

The company is a well-established software firm working to turn messy, fragmented data into something teams can actually trust and use. It's not about chasing trends - it's about building something that lasts.

You'll be joining a team that's growing fast, balancing legacy realities with new architecture, and figuring things out as they go. It's collaborative, sometimes chaotic, and full of smart people who care more about getting it right than being right.

What You'll Do

• Shape how data flows across the platform by designing real-time and batch pipelines
• Build APIs that let internal teams access the data they actually need - not just what's easiest to expose
• Join working sessions where engineers, product, and business leads sort out what's possible
• Balance performance with governance
• Handle schema drift, conflicting data models, and competing priorities without losing your cool
• Guide architectural decisions and pair with developers to raise the overall bar
• Make calls about what's worth automating vs. what just needs to get done
• Leave behind systems (and documentation) that outlive you - in a good way

Basic Qualifications

• 5+ years of data engineering experience - enough to know that building the thing is only half the job
• Proficiency with modern data tools like Spark, Kafka, Databricks, or Azure Data Factory - and knowing when to use which
• Strong API development skills in Go, Java, or Python - because self-serve data means someone has to serve it
• Experience with data governance and compliance - not just the tools, but the tradeoffs they introduce

Preferred Qualifications

• You've worked on a "data as a product" team - or at least wrestled with what that really means
• Experience with GraphQL or gRPC - not mandatory, but helpful for building flexible interfaces
• Familiarity with federated or self-serve data platforms - especially if you've seen both the upside and the mess
• You've built for real-time data use cases and know how to avoid downstream chaos
• Comfort with Terraform or Bicep for standing up infrastructure - or at least reading someone else's scripts without panicking

The Challenges

• Some legacy data flows still exist - and they don't always play nice with the new stack
• You'll be asked to scale systems that weren't originally designed for scale
• Not everyone agrees on what "data product" means yet - part of your job is shaping that

Your Impact

• Help internal teams stop guessing by delivering cleaner, faster, more accessible data
• Turn tribal knowledge into systems that scale - and don't break when someone's on vacation
• Lay the technical foundation for data use that's actually sustainable