Data Engineer, Data & AI Platforms

About this role

Zeno Group is the fiercely independent and global, integrated communications agency, born from PR. We bring together the boldest and brightest talent to help clients across industries and sectors unleash the power of strategic communications. Guided by our "Fearless Pursuit of the Unexpected," we push the boundaries to achieve real business value and societal impact for clients. Winner of the industry’s most coveted awards including the 2024 PRWeek U.S. Outstanding Large Agency of the Year, 2023 PRWeek Purpose Agency of the Year, 2022 PRWeek Global Agency of the Year, 2022 PRovoke Best Large Agency to Work For in North America and a three-time winner of PRWeek’s Best Places to Work. Zeno has also been previously recognized by the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Zeno is a DJE Holdings Company.

Job Description:

Data Engineer, Data & AI Platforms

Zeno Group is hiring its first dedicated data engineer. You'll set the technical direction as we rebuild our data platform around AWS, design the data layer our AI products run on, and shape how a global communications agency works with data long after the migration ships.   Half the job is collaboration. You'll work daily alongside our Data & Intelligence (D&I) analysts on live, revenue-generating client work and be in the room for every architecture and migration decision. The D&I team already runs strong operational data workflows; your job is to grow that foundation into a centralized, AI-ready architecture without breaking the client work that runs on it today.   The role is full-time and reports into Zeno's AI & Innovation practice.   The team you're joining AI & Innovation is a small team building a new practice inside a large organization. We move fast, cover a lot of ground, and hold ourselves to a high standard. A few things define how we work. Craft over speed. We optimize for doing things well. AI and automation save us real time, and we reinvest those hours into workthat's more durable and more useful. A pipeline that's clean, well-documented, and built to last is worth more than one that shipped yesterday and breaks next week. Build what others can't access. We license tools when they solve the problem. But the work that differentiates Zeno is built in-house: proprietary data systems, AI products, and infrastructure that our clients and teams can't get anywhere else. You're rebuilding Zeno's data layer for where it needs to go next, not maintaining someone else's platform. Makers who can hold a room. This role isn't heads-down-only. You'll be in architecture conversations, working through migration decisions with the DevOps team, and sitting across from analysts who need you to understand their client context before you build anything. We look for people who are strong technically and comfortable communicating what they know to people who don't share their vocabulary. Radical visibility. We're a small team with outsized scope. There's no room to go quiet. We surface our work as we go, share what we're stuck on, flag when we have capacity, and keep each other in the loop without being asked. If you're the kind of personwho finishes something and immediately shares it with the team, you'll thrive here. If you prefer to disappear into your work and surface only when it's done, this isn't the right fit.   About the Role • Transition data infrastructure to a modern architecture built around AWS. • Improve and scale existing client data pipelines while keeping client deliverables running smoothly. • Support the Snowflake migration by documenting current schemas, validating that the new architecture preserves existing functionality, and testing with real client data.

• Build the data layer for AI products, including ingestion pipelines, APIs, and programmatic access layers that connect data sources to LLM interfaces.

• Build and maintain data pipelines by configuring Fivetran connectors for paid media data, building pipelines for sources Fivetran doesn't cover, and writing validation and transformation steps.

• Connect data to BI tools by building views and clean tables that analysts can query directly without writing complex SQL.

• Support ongoing client work alongside client-facing analysts, from adjusting tables for new data cuts to standing up pipelines for new clients.

  About You: • 6+ years of hands-on data engineering experience. You've built pipelines, debugged data issues, and written clean SQL in a production environment. • Comfortable with cloud data warehouses and modern tooling. Experience with at least one of Redshift, Snowflake, or BigQuery. You understand ETL/ELT patterns. Python for data work. AWS experience preferred. • You hold your own in architecture conversations. You'd be in the room for decisions about schema design, warehouse selection, and data modeling, making sure what gets built serves the team's needs. • You work well with analytically strong teammates. Our analysts have deep client and data experience from running operations at previous agencies. You need to understand their context and build things the team can maintain and use alongside you. • Familiarity with and curiosity about LLM tooling, vector databases, or document processing pipelines matters here. Part of this role is identifying where LLMs plug into our data workflows. • Consulting or agency experience is a plus.

  Technical Environment • Current: Snowflake, Fivetran, Tableau, Alteryx, Excel • Target: AWS (Redshift, S3, Lambda), Fivetran, Tray.ai, Tableau/PowerBI/Looker, Hex • Adjacent: Claude/LLM integrations via MCP, custom dashboard development

• Data types: paid media performance (Meta, Google, TikTok), earned media (Muckrack, Cision), employee engagement event data (Amplitude), creator/influencer campaign data

  Details • Preferred location: Chicago

• Reports to: Head of AI & Innovation

Pay Range: $150,000 - $200,000 USD/yr.

An employee's pay position within the salary range will be based on several factors inc

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