Senior Data Engineer at fairlife
Chicago, IL
$110,000–$125,000
Jul 20, 2026
Chicago, IL
Jul 22, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior individual-contributor role focused on building and maintaining the data infrastructure behind an enterprise analytics platform. Day-to-day work spans designing batch and streaming pipelines that pull from ERP, IIoT, and SaaS sources into a cloud lakehouse, authoring dimensional data models, and creating shared Python libraries and CI/CD tooling that the broader team relies on. The role also involves early-stage work on AI-facing platform features such as semantic search and agent integrations, and requires regular collaboration with manufacturing and business stakeholders.
Senior level · 5+ years · Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI · Bachelor's required · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 2 people in the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (database administrators). range 1–4
Applicant volume Light — Few people clear these requirements, so an application that does clear them gets looked at. Worth applying to even if you miss a nice-to-have.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $112,092 (middle half $79,112–$138,980).
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (6)
The role sits at the boundary between data/pipeline engineering (15-1243 Database Architects) and general software development (15-1252 Software Developers). The emphasis on lakehouse architecture, dimensional modeling, and data pipeline design tips it toward 15-1243, but the strong Python library/framework ownership and CI/CD lifecycle work are genuine software-development signals.
The degree requirement is stated as 'Bachelor's degree … AND 5+ years of experience' with no explicit 'or equivalent experience' escape clause, so it is treated as a hard gate.
Dimensional modeling / star schema / Kimball is listed as a required skill but names a methodology rather than a specific tool; it is included because the JD explicitly gates on it as a named competency.
Delta Lake and Microsoft Fabric/Databricks are listed under a 'preferred' qualifier ('preferred') in the qualifications section.
KQL, RAG/semantic search, MCP tool integrations, and manufacturing/factory data experience (MES, historians, IIoT) are all explicitly called out as 'a plus', so they are marked preferred. Manufacturing domain experience is a methodology/domain note rather than a named tool and is omitted from the skills list per extraction rules.
No compensation figures are provided in the posting.
Read the full posting
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