Position Summary

New River Electrical Corporation (NREC) is seeking a hands-on Senior Data Platform Engineer to help build and mature our Data and Analytics practice. In this role, you will design, build, and manage the foundational data architecture that connects our core enterprise applications — including systems like our ERP and HRIS — into a unified, governed analytics platform.

This role requires a blend of high-level architectural vision and deep technical execution. You will assess NREC's current data landscape and help determine the right platform direction within our Microsoft-centered ecosystem (for example, Microsoft Fabric or Azure Databricks), then build the pipelines, governance standards, and semantic layer needed to support enterprise-wide reporting and analytics. As a key partner to the business, you will ensure our data initiatives align with stakeholder needs to drive operational efficiency for both our corporate and field-based workforce.

Duties/Responsibilities

• Data Architecture Foundation: Design, build, and optimize NREC's centralized analytics data environment (medallion-style bronze/silver/gold layers), ensuring it's scalable, secure, and interoperable across enterprise systems.
• Analytics Pipeline Engineering: Develop, maintain, and automate ETL/ELT pipelines that bring data from enterprise applications and field-operation tools into the analytics platform. This role owns the analytical data flow (source systems ? bronze/silver/gold); operational, system-to-system integration is handled by a separate integrations function.
• Data Governance & Quality: Establish and enforce data governance frameworks, standardize data definitions, and ensure data accuracy, quality, and security across the organization.
• Semantic Modeling & BI Foundation: Build certified, gold-layer semantic models that serve as the trusted foundation for enterprise reporting. Hands-on Power BI report-building is a plus, but not the core focus — a dedicated reporting role will build on this foundation as the function grows.
• AI-Forward Execution: Actively use AI tools (e.g., Microsoft Copilot, Claude, or other NREC-approved assistants) to accelerate your own pipeline development, documentation, and troubleshooting. NREC is moving toward an AI-first way of working — this role isn't responsible for AI strategy or governance, but you're expected to build AI tooling into how you get things done day to day, and may occasionally help troubleshoot AI-driven access to the data platform (e.g., Copilot or other AI agents querying Power BI/semantic models).
• Platform & Tool Strategy: Lead a structured evaluation of the data platform and tooling best suited to NREC's needs within its Microsoft ecosystem. NREC is not locked into a specific platform — you'll have real input here, and a well-supported recommendation for an alternative approach (e.g., Azure Databricks) is welcome.
• Stakeholder Alignment: Partner with department heads to understand operational pain points and reporting needs, translating complex data concepts into clear, actionable insights for corporate leadership and field operations management.

Other Duties

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without notice.

Position Type/Expected Hours of Work

This is a full-time position in the corporate office. Days and hours of work are Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Qualifications

• Experience: 7+ years of IT/data experience, with a proven track record of architecting, building, and scaling data infrastructure.
• Technical Proficiency: Strong hands-on background in SQL, Python, and cloud data platforms, ideally within a Microsoft/Azure environment. Experience with Microsoft Fabric and/or Azure Databricks, along with Microsoft Purview (or equivalent data governance tooling), is a strong plus. Comfort designing data models/semantic layers for BI consumption is required; hands-on Power BI report authoring is a plus. Equivalent experience on other clouds (e.g., Databricks on AWS) is also valued — the underlying skills tend to transfer well to Azure.
• AI Tooling Fluency: Comfortable incorporating AI assistants into daily engineering work — using them to write and review code, draft documentation, debug pipelines, etc. NREC is building toward an AI-first team, so a genuine habit of working alongside AI tools (not just passing familiarity) matters more here than experience with any one specific product.
• Industry Context: Experience in the construction industry or supporting a diverse workforce with significant field-based (non-office) operations is strongly preferred.
• Leadership & Influence: Demonstrated history of working independently as a technical lead, with the ability to help scale and mentor a future data team.
• Communication: Exceptional interpersonal skills with the ability to communicate technical roadmaps, business cases, and data insights to non-technical business executives.
• Education: B.S. in Computer Science, Information Systems, a related field, or equivalent professional experience.

Travel

Expected travel of 10% to 20% to visit regional offices, field sites, or attend vendor/industry conferences as needed.

Physical Demands

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to talk and hear. The employee is required to sit at a desk and work on a computer for prolonged periods of time.