Deloitte

# Data Engineering Department Lead - Build From Zero

**Fluid** is building the Shopify for direct-sales. We're looking for our first Data Engineering hire—someone who will build our entire data infrastructure from the ground up and establish the foundation for data-driven decision making across our platform.

## The Opportunity

This is a rare chance to build a data engineering department from scratch. You'll own everything: architecture, tooling, pipelines, analytics infrastructure, and eventually team building. Your work will directly enable AI capabilities, business intelligence, and operational excellence across our platform.

## What You'll Build

**Data Infrastructure**

* Design and implement our complete data architecture—streaming, batch processing, storage, and analytics

* Build real-time data pipelines for our direct-sales platform serving thousands of businesses

* Establish OLAP systems for business intelligence and operational dashboards

* Create robust ETL/ELT processes for data ingestion, transformation, and modeling

**Platform & Tooling**

* Architect scalable data streaming solutions (Kafka, Kinesis, or similar)

* Implement data warehousing strategy (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift)

* Build monitoring, alerting, and data quality frameworks

* Establish CI/CD for data pipelines and infrastructure as code practices

**AI & Analytics Foundation**

* Create data infrastructure that enables AI/ML workflows and model training

* Design analytics frameworks for product intelligence and business metrics

* Build customer data platforms that power personalization and recommendations

* Establish data governance, privacy, and compliance frameworks

**Department Leadership**

* Define data engineering standards, practices, and architectural principles

* Plan and execute hiring strategy as we scale the data team

* Collaborate with engineering, product, and business teams to drive data strategy

* Mentor future data engineers and establish technical culture

## What We're Looking For

**Technical Expertise**

* 6+ years in data engineering with 2+ years in leadership or senior technical roles

* Deep experience with modern data stack: streaming platforms, cloud data warehouses, orchestration tools

* Proficiency with Python, SQL, and infrastructure as code (Terraform, CloudFormation)

* Experience building and optimizing data pipelines at scale (handling millions of events/day)

**Architecture & Leadership**

* Proven track record of designing data architectures from scratch

* Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and their data services

* Understanding of data modeling, dimensional modeling, and analytics engineering

* Strong communication skills and ability to translate business needs into technical solutions

**Startup Experience Preferred**

* Experience building data infrastructure in fast-moving, resource-constrained environments

* Comfort with being the "first data person" and defining everything from policies to tooling

* Ability to balance technical debt with rapid feature delivery

* Understanding of how to build for scale while starting simple

## The Challenge

Direct-sales generates complex, high-velocity data: transactions, inventory, customer interactions, sales performance, and operational metrics across thousands of businesses.

Your challenge: Build the data infrastructure that turns this complexity into competitive advantage—enabling real-time analytics, AI-powered insights, and operational intelligence that makes our customers more successful.

## Why This Role Matters

* **Foundational Impact**: Your architecture decisions will shape how Fluid uses data for years to come

* **Market Opportunity**: Infrastructure play in a $200B industry that's data-starved

* **AI Integration**: Ground floor opportunity to build data systems that power AI-first workflows

* **Department Building**: Chance to hire and lead the data team as we scale

## What Success Looks Like

**6 Months**: Data pipelines operational, basic analytics infrastructure live, AI/ML data feeds established

**12 Months**: Comprehensive data platform powering business intelligence, customer analytics, and operational dashboards

**18+ Months**: Leading a data engineering team, advanced AI/ML capabilities, industry-leading data infrastructure

## Next Steps

**Show us your systems thinking.** Send us:

1. Examples of data architectures you've built from scratch

2. Your approach to balancing speed vs. scalability in data infrastructure

3. How you think about data strategy for AI-first platforms

4. Your philosophy on building and leading technical teams

*Ready to build the data foundation for the future of direct-sales? Learn more: https://www.fluid.app/*

Job Type: Full-time

Pay: $150,000.00 - $200,000.00 per year

Benefits:

• Dental insurance
• Health insurance
• Paid time off

Ability to Commute:

• Lehi, UT 84043 (Required)

Ability to Relocate:

• Lehi, UT 84043: Relocate before starting work (Required)

Work Location: In person