Lead Snowflake Data Engineer in Belfast

KX software powers the time-aware data-driven decisions that enable fast-moving companies to outpace competitors, realizing the full potential of their AI investments. The KX platform delivers transformational value by addressing data challenges related to completeness, timeliness and efficiency, ensuring companies understand change over time and can achieve faster, more accurate insights at any scale, cost-effectively. KX is essential to the operations of the world's top investment banks, aerospace and defence, high-tech manufacturing, healthcare and life sciences, automotive and fleet telematics organizations. The company has established offices and a robust customer base across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

Overview Of The Role

KX is hiring a Lead Snowflake Data Engineer to join a lean, four-person Enterprise Applications team reporting into the Head of Enterprise Applications. This is the critical hire that takes ownership of Snowflake as an internal capability, inheriting an in-progress implementation from third-party partners, validating what’s been built, and carrying the platform forward towards a single Business 360 view unifying Finance, Revenue, and People data. This is a hands‑on, end-to-end role spanning ingestion through to certified metrics, with direct exposure to senior leadership and a mandate to shape how KX uses data and AI to make faster, more accurate decisions.

Key Responsibilities

• Own data ingestion pipelines into Bronze through Workato, and maintain the full Medallion stack: Bronze (raw), Silver (cleansed), Gold (dimensional models and marts), and Platinum (semantic layer and certified metrics).
• Deliver data governance across all Medallion layers: RBAC with least‑privilege access, dynamic data masking, column‑level security, data catalogue, business glossary, and lineage from source to semantic layer, aligned to GDPR, SOC 2, and ISO 27001.
• Implement data quality and observability: tests, freshness SLAs, anomaly detection, alerting, and clear escalation paths when issues arise.
• Drive the Snowflake capability roadmap: evaluate and pilot dynamic tables, streams and tasks, Snowpark, Cortex, and Marketplace; identify where Cortex and LLM functions can reduce manual effort for business users within KX’s AI governance framework.
• Manage platform performance, cost, and reliability: sizing, clustering, materialisation, and query tuning, and maintain documentation, lineage, and standards for everyone who works with Snowflake.
• Sit on the Data Governance Work Group (chaired by the CIO), contributing to data ownership, metric certification, and schema change approvals.

Skills

• Advanced SQL and Python: 5+ years of production experience in an analytics or data engineering context.
• Deep dimensional modelling (Kimball: facts, dimensions, SCDs, conformed dimensions) with a clear understanding of how each fits in a Medallion architecture.
• Production dbt experience: model design, tests, macros, snapshots, and a clear point of view on project structure; dbt Cloud familiarity is a plus.
• Hands‑on experience building and maintaining a Platinum‑tier semantic layer that non‑technical users can rely on.
• GitLab proficiency: branching, merge requests, and CI/CD for dbt and SQL.
• Strong communication: able to align a CFO, a sales ops lead, and an HR analyst on a shared data definition before building anything.
• Genuine curiosity about AI: specifically what Snowflake Cortex and LLM functions can and can’t do, and when to reach for them.
• Practical data governance delivery: hands‑on implementation of RBAC, column‑level security, dynamic data masking, and encryption in a cloud data platform; experience building or maintaining a data catalogue and business glossary, defining data classification and retention policies, and evidencing lineage from ingestion to reporting.
• Regulatory context awareness: understands GDPR and SOC 2 at minimum, and knows how to operationalise governance without it becoming a blocker; comfort enforcing an existing data classification scheme (restricted / confidential / classified) rather than inventing one.
• Working knowledge of L2C, R2R, H2R, and SaaS metrics (ARR, NRR, bookings vs revenue).

Preferred Qualifications

• Familiarity with BI tools consuming Gold and Platinum models (Power BI, Tableau).
• Snowflake certifications (SnowPro Core or Advanced).
• Background in lean environments where ownership is wide and titles are loose.

Location & Workplace Type

Hybrid working model based out of Ireland or UK.

Why Choose KX

• Data Driven: We lead with instinct and follow fact.
• Naturally Curious: We lean in, listen and learn fast.
• All In: We take ownership, take on challenges and give it our all.
• Individually tailored training and skills development.
• Private healthcare package and Employee Assistance Programme.
• Enhanced maternity and paternity package.