GCP Data Engineer - Data Warehouse Migration (Contract)
Job Description
Job Description
Location: Denver, CO
Duration: 6-month contract
Experience: 6+ years
Work Authorization: Only U.S. Citizens and Green Card holders will be considered. Candidates must be able to work on our W2.
Hiring Timeline: Please note our end-to-end hiring cycle typically takes 60–70 days due to the client's MSP onboarding and background check (BGC) process. This role is not a fit for candidates seeking an immediate start or an immediate jump — please apply only if you are comfortable with this timeline.
Position Summary
We are seeking a GCP Data Engineer to drive a large-scale data warehouse migration to Google Cloud Platform. The role involves migrating legacy on-prem data warehouse workloads to BigQuery, re-engineering ETL/ELT pipelines, validating data quality and reconciliation, and optimizing performance and cost in the target environment. You will work closely with data architects, analysts, and business stakeholders to deliver a reliable, well-governed cloud data platform.
Technical Stack
- Cloud Platform: Google Cloud Platform (BigQuery, Cloud Storage, Dataflow, Dataproc, Pub/Sub, Cloud Composer)
- Migration Tooling: BigQuery Migration Service, Database Migration Service, Datastream
- Languages: SQL, Python, PySpark
- Orchestration: Cloud Composer (Airflow), dbt
- Source Systems: Legacy EDWs (Teradata / Oracle / SQL Server / Netezza), flat files, APIs
- Data Modeling: Dimensional modeling (star/snowflake), partitioning and clustering strategies in BigQuery
- DevOps: Git, CI/CD (Cloud Build / GitHub Actions), Terraform
- Governance & Quality: Dataplex, data lineage, reconciliation and validation frameworks, IAM and security best practices
Responsibilities
- Migrate legacy data warehouse schemas, historical data, and workloads to BigQuery, including SQL translation and refactoring of stored procedures and ETL logic
- Design, build, and optimize batch and streaming pipelines using Dataflow, Dataproc/PySpark, Pub/Sub, and Cloud Composer
- Perform data validation and reconciliation between source and target systems to ensure completeness, accuracy, and auditability
- Optimize BigQuery performance and cost through partitioning, clustering, materialized views, and workload tuning
- Implement CI/CD and infrastructure-as-code practices for data pipelines and GCP resources
- Collaborate with architects, analysts, and business teams on cutover planning, parallel-run testing, and post-migration support
Required Experience
- 6+ years of data engineering experience, including 3+ years hands-on with GCP data services (BigQuery, Dataflow, Cloud Composer)
- Proven experience with at least one end-to-end data warehouse migration to BigQuery (e.g., from Teradata, Oracle, SQL Server, or Netezza)
- Expert-level SQL and strong Python/PySpark skills, including translating and optimizing complex legacy SQL for BigQuery
- Solid understanding of dimensional data modeling, data quality/reconciliation frameworks, and cloud security/IAM fundamentals
- Nice to have: GCP Professional Data Engineer certification, dbt, Datastream/CDC pipelines, and Looker or other BI tools