Data Engineer

The Strawhecker Group, LLC is hiring a Data Engineer on a 1099 contract with the opportunity to transition to full-time W2 employment. You’ll help power payment analytics and business intelligence by designing and maintaining reliable data pipelines on Google Cloud Platform. The work includes building scalable ETL/ELT infrastructure, supporting analytics-ready datasets in BigQuery, and translating evolving business needs into dependable, well-documented data products. Contract-to-hire candidates also receive support with essential tooling, while W2 team members can access a benefits package that includes Free Fridays, Unlimited PTO, and insurance coverage.

What you’ll do

• Design, build, and maintain scalable ETL/ELT pipelines to ingest, transform, and deliver data from internal systems and third-party payment sources.
• Build and optimize data models and warehouse structures in BigQuery for analytics, reporting, and product use cases.
• Develop and maintain pipeline orchestration using tools such as Cloud Composer (Airflow) or Dataflow.
• Protect data quality through validation, testing, and monitoring to ensure consistency, integrity, and accuracy across pipelines.
• Migrate transformation logic from Excel spreadsheets into versioned SQL tables, enabling historical reloads and reproducible processing based on rules at a given point in time.
• Collaborate with a multidisciplinary team including Data Engineers, Back-End Software Engineers, Product Managers, and Data Scientists.
• Implement data security and access controls appropriate for sensitive payment and merchant data, aligned with PCI DSS and internal governance standards.
• Optimize pipeline performance and cost efficiency across Google Cloud Platform data services.
• Translate ambiguous business requests into reliable datasets, analyses, and data products, continuously improving ingestion and transformation for speed, scalability, and cost.

What you bring

• 3+ years of recent hands-on experience in data engineering or a related backend engineering role.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field (or more).
• Strong SQL skills plus experience with data modeling for analytics workloads.
• Python proficiency for data pipeline development.
• Hands-on experience with Google Cloud Platform, especially BigQuery and related data services.
• Experience with workflow orchestration tools such as Cloud Composer, Apache Airflow, or Dataflow.
• Strong understanding of OLAP and analytics-oriented modeling concepts, including partitioning, clustering, and performance tuning.
• Experience working with structured and semi-structured data including JSON, CSV, and Parquet.
• A record of delivering projects on time, with a focus on execution.
• Experience across the software development life cycle, including best practices and Agile development.

Benefits and work environment

• Free Fridays (1 Friday per month taken as PTO)
• Unlimited PTO
• Casual work environment
• Health Insurance and Dental Insurance
• Simple IRA Match
• Life Insurance premiums paid 100% by TSG

Contract details and location

• This role starts as a 1099 independent contractor engagement with the opportunity to transition to W2 employment based on performance and business need.
• During the 1099 phase, the position can be performed remotely from anywhere in the United States.
• Upon transition to W2 employment, the role will be onsite in Omaha, NE.
• 1099 terms for scope, duration, and payment will be defined in a separate Independent Contractor Agreement.
• TSG provides equipment needed to perform the work.
• As an independent contractor, you are responsible for your own tax withholding and insurance, and this phase does not include TSG’s employee benefits package.
• Contract-to-hire candidates are subject to the same background check, access control, and data security requirements, including compliance with PCI DSS.

Technologies

• Python, SQL, BigQuery, Google Cloud Platform
• Cloud Composer, Airflow, Dataflow
• dbt, Looker Studio, Tableau
• Excel, JSON, CSV, Parquet
• PCI DSS

Application note: Please provide a resume when applying.