ROLE OVERVIEW
The Senior Consultant - Data is an autonomous data engineering leader who owns end-to-end delivery of moderately complex data platform and analytics engineering engagements. This role operates as 3Ci's technical authority on assigned programs - trusted to make data architecture decisions independently, manage director-level client relationships, and represent 3Ci's Data Engineering practice without daily supervision.
Senior Consultants drive the full data platform lifecycle: from source system discovery and architecture design through pipeline build, data modeling, analytics enablement, and DataOps operationalization. AI-augmented engineering is a core expectation at this level, and Senior Consultants lead AI adoption on their engagements while building 3Ci's internal AI data engineering knowledge base.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES BY COMPETENCY AREA
Data Platform Architecture & Delivery
- Lead end-to-end delivery of data platform engagements: architecture design, pipeline engineering, data modeling, and analytics enablement
- Own engagement governance: technical scope, schedule, quality, budget tracking, and stakeholder communication
- Design cloud-native data architectures: lakehouse patterns (Databricks, Snowflake, Microsoft Fabric), medallion architecture, data mesh domain design
- Lead data platform migrations: legacy DW to cloud, on-premises to cloud-native, and platform consolidations
- Establish DataOps practices: CI/CD for data pipelines, automated testing frameworks, data observability tooling, and metadata management
Advanced Data Engineering
- Design and implement enterprise-grade dbt projects: multi-project architecture, packages, macros, semantic layer, and governance
- Build streaming and real-time data pipeline architectures: Kafka, Spark Streaming, Azure Event Hubs, or equivalent
- Design and implement data quality frameworks: multi-layer validation, SLA monitoring, anomaly detection, and data contracts
- Develop AI-ready data infrastructure: feature stores, vector databases, embedding pipelines, and model serving data layers
- Define and enforce data engineering technical standards on all managed engagements
Client Technical Advisory
- Serve as primary data engineering advisory contact for client data directors, platform architects, and engineering managers
- Advise clients on data platform strategy: build vs. buy decisions, cloud platform selection, tooling rationalization, and DataOps maturity
- Lead technical architecture reviews, data discovery workshops, and platform roadmap sessions
- Identify expansion opportunities in active accounts and surface structured growth opportunities to practice leadership
- Manage difficult technical conversations: platform limitations, data quality findings, and architecture trade-off decisions
AI & Intelligent Data Engineering
- Lead integration of AI capabilities into data platform delivery: LLM-powered data transformation, AI-assisted pipeline generation, and intelligent data quality monitoring
- Design and implement AI-ready data architectures for client AI and ML programs: vector stores, RAG data pipelines, feature engineering platforms, and embedding infrastructure
- Advise clients on AI augmentation of their DataOps practices: AI agents for pipeline monitoring, anomaly detection, and automated data quality remediation
- Build and maintain 3Ci's Data AI Playbook contributions: AI architecture patterns, prompt libraries for data engineering, and tool integration guides
- Coach Consultants and Junior Consultants on AI-augmented data engineering techniques, responsible AI data use, and code quality review
Practice Development
- Contribute to 3Ci Data Engineering methodology: frameworks, dbt packages, pipeline templates, and reusable architecture blueprints
- Support pursuit activities: solution design, effort estimation, technical scoping, and proposal development
- Participate in account planning and go-to-market conversations with practice leadership
LEADERSHIP EXPECTATIONS
- Operates fully independently on data engineering engagements without requiring daily management oversight
- Brings structured solutions with every technical escalation - every risk has a recommended mitigation
- Develops Consultant-level team members through specific, documented, and timely technical code review and coaching
- Sets the data engineering quality standard for the engagement team through personal example
- Actively pursues certification and AI skill development to stay at the forefront of the data engineering discipline
- Contributes to 3Ci's market reputation through technical excellence, not just task completion
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Science, Engineering, or related field
- 5-8 years of data engineering or analytics engineering experience in client-facing consulting or complex enterprise environments
- Demonstrated end-to-end ownership of cloud data platform builds or migrations
- Deep expertise in dbt, a cloud data platform (Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, or Fabric), and a modern orchestration tool
- Proven ability to design AI-ready data architectures: vector databases, embedding pipelines, or RAG data infrastructure
- Director-level client technical relationship management experience
- Strong DataOps and data quality framework design capability
Preferred Certifications & Credentials
- dbt Certified Analytics Engineer - required within 6 months if not already held
- Databricks Certified Data Engineer Professional
- Snowflake SnowPro Advanced: Data Engineer
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Engineer Associate (DP-203) or Fabric Analytics Engineer
- AWS Certified Data Analytics - Specialty
- AI/ML data platform certification: Azure AI Engineer, AWS ML Specialty, or equivalent
