Data Engineer

Summary: The Data Engineer will focus on backend data engineering tasks, developing and maintaining extract, transform, load (ETL) processes to integrate data from various sources into the firm’s data systems. This role will work extensively with Microsoft Fabric and collaborate with data architects, other engineers, and analysts to ensure data pipelines are efficient and reliable. The Data Engineer will also support teams delivering data dashboards and reporting, ensuring the provision of necessary information to the organization. This role is essential for developing and maintaining our overall data taxonomy and ensuring its consistency across multiple systems and platforms.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design, construct, and maintain data pipelines (ETL processes) to integrate large volumes of legal data efficiently and securely from various sources.

• Develop data lake and data warehouse solutions, implementing best practices for data ingestion, storage, and retrieval.

• Establish and deploy comprehensive data governance and security frameworks including data access controls, compliance measures, and data classification.

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including analysts, attorneys, and IT professionals, to understand data requirements and design backend solutions that meet their needs.

• Assess and prioritize data initiatives based on business objectives, best practices, and partner/practice need to ensure alignment with strategic goals.

• Design and implement testing strategies for data pipelines, validating data integrity, accuracy, and performance throughout the workflow.

• Create and maintain thorough documentation for data architectures, pipelines, and transformations, and processes to ensure transparency and knowledge sharing.

• Build and optimize automated data workflows to streamline ingestion, transformation, and processing, reducing manual effort and improving efficiency.

• Optimize data storage and retrieval processes to improve performance and scalability, leveraging cloud-based technology such as Azure.

• Participate in and contribute to data quality enhancement planning and implementation for new projects.

• Stay current with the latest industry trends and best practices in data engineering and analytics, continuously evaluating and implementing new tools and techniques to enhance our data infrastructure.

• Provide technical support and troubleshooting assistance for data-related issues, working proactively to identify and resolve potential problems.

• Collaborate with cybersecurity and compliance teams to ensure data security and regulatory compliance.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a technology-related field. 7+ years of related work experience, preferably in a legal or regulatory environment.

• Proven experience leading data engineering projects, including requirements gathering, architecture design, development, testing, and deployment.

• Experience with Microsoft Fabric or a combination of Azure Synapse Analytics, ADLS Gen 2, Synapse SQL Pools, Azure Data Factory (ADF) and/or other Azure data platforms.

• Experience with the Microsoft Power Platform, such as Power BI, Power Automate, Power Apps, or other similar tools.

• Strong SQL Experience including complex queries, stored procedures, SSIS, SSRS

• Experience building data pipelines using Python/PySpark

• Proven experience designing and implementing data architectures, including system requirements, technology selection, and governance.

• Expertise in end-to-end multi-layered data architectures (e.g., bronze/silver/gold), managing data from raw ingestion to business-ready datasets while ensuring quality, lineage, and documentation.

• Strong data modeling skills, including conceptual, logical, and physical models for optimized storage and retrieval.

• Proven ability to test data pipelines for accuracy, consistency, and performance, including unit and integration testing.

• Experience in migrating data from on-premises databases and servers to Azure Cloud environments is preferred.

• Experience with version control; knowledge and experience with GitHub is a plus.

• Ability to present technical ideas in business-friendly and user-friendly language.

Working Conditions:

• Dexterity of hands and fingers to operate a computer keyboard, mouse, and other computer components.

• Normal office environment with little exposure to excessive noise, dust, temperature, and the like.

This job description is intended to describe the general requirements of this position. As such, it is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of job duties or responsibilities required in this job. Subject to firm needs, duties and responsibilities of this position may change at any time, on a temporary or permanent basis, and with or without notice.

Equal Employment and Opportunity Statement:

Barnes & Thornburg is committed to equal employment opportunity in both principle and as a matter of policy. We will recruit, hire, train, promote, compensate and provide benefits to all applicants and employees without regard to ancestry, sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, gender, age, religion, religious creed, mental and/or physical disability, medical condition, military and/or veteran’s status, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, or any other basis protected by applicable federal, state and local laws. This policy applies to all recruiting, hiring, promotions, upgrades, layoffs, compensation, benefits, terminations and all other privileges, terms and conditions of employment. The firm complies fully with all federal, state and local equal employment opportunity laws.