Senior Data Engineer

About Ellis Porter

At Ellis Porter, our goal is to improve the immigration experience for employers and individuals so they can thrive in a smaller world. We are a team of dedicated immigration professionals (we call ourselves Porters) who believe passionately in the economic, cultural, and human value of immigration. We help clients navigate complex, high-stakes decisions with refreshingly clear guidance, creative strategies, responsive service, and genuine empathy.

Immigration law is challenging, fast-paced, and deeply personal; it calls for care, sound judgment, and a shared commitment to doing excellent work. At Ellis Porter, we love what we do, and who we do it with, and we find great satisfaction in knowing that our work positively impacts the careers, families, and lives of all those we serve.

Our Culture

We are immensely proud of our culture at Ellis Porter. It’s grounded in the belief that people do their best work when they feel trusted, supported, and encouraged to bring their whole selves to work. We take our work seriously, but not ourselves. We do not tolerate drama, and jerks are not allowed. It’s not what you would expect from a typical law firm, because we are not a typical law firm.

In the demanding, ever-changing world of immigration, our processes and tools continue to evolve, and we look for Porters who approach change with adaptability, curiosity, and a desire to keep improving how we serve one another and our clients. If you believe great work can be both high-performing and human, come join us and help make a difference.

Position Summary

Ellis Porter (EP) is investing in data to build a more resilient firm and make our collective knowledge more useful to our people, clients, and business. We want trusted, connected data to become a lasting advantage: improving service, informing decisions, and enabling responsible use of AI, new technologies, and partnerships. As a Senior Data Engineer, you’ll be our first in-house data engineer and own our Databricks platform end to end, from building reliable pipelines and trusted data products to managing platform operations and shaping its future. This is a builder role for someone who enjoys hands-on development, problem-solving, and the opportunity to shape a growing data function.

Reporting to the Manager of Data Services and Products, you'll inherit a working platform from our external vendor, with support during the transition. You'll evaluate what's in place, identify opportunities for improvement, and work directly with business stakeholders to turn their needs into practical, reliable data solutions. Since you'll be the sole engineer in a small data function, code review runs on design records, CI checks, and self-review. You'll partner with your manager on architecture and build-versus-buy decisions alongside business, application, IT, and security partners. You'll also work together to establish practices for code quality, additional technical review, and operational coverage.

This is a full-time position offering flexible work arrangements including remote, hybrid, or on-site options at our Troy, MI or Ann Arbor, MI offices. Please note – although this role can be remote, all work must be performed within the United States.

What You'll Do

• Build and maintain ingestion pipelines that bring data from EP’s business systems into Databricks, with automated quality checks and source reconciliation to identify missing, inaccurate, or duplicate data.

• Design and develop silver and gold data layers, delivering governed data products that support reporting, cross-system matching, and identity resolution.

• Own day-to-day platform operations, including job scheduling, monitoring, alerting, data freshness, access control, and cost optimization; maintain runbooks, test recovery procedures, and document knowledge so the platform can be supported by others.

• Manage CI/CD pipelines and deployments across development, testing, and production environments using Azure DevOps.

• Coordinate with EP’s IT vendor on Azure infrastructure needs outside the data platform; preserve systems of record, enforce user-appropriate access, and validate licensing and platform constraints before deployment.

• Partner directly with business stakeholders to understand their needs and translate them into practical, reliable data solutions.

• Design and implement approved confidentiality, retention, least-privilege access, and audit controls for sensitive client and matter data.

• Support bounded AI and partner pilots with appropriate masking, evaluation data, and human approval before expanding access or enabling changes to operational records.

• Perform other duties as assigned by management.

What Skills and Experience You’ll Bring

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent practical experience.

• 4+ years of experience in data engineering.

• 2+ years of hands-on experience building and operating Databricks solutions in production, including multi-task Lakeflow Jobs over Delta tables governed by Unity Catalog. Experience deploying through Declarative Automation Bundles (formerly Databricks Asset Bundles) or equivalent infrastructure-as-code is strongly preferred.

• Ability to explain a production pipeline you’ve built, the reasoning behind your design decisions, and how you addressed failures or operational challenges. Communicate clearly with nontechnical partners and connect engineering decisions to business impact.

• Proficiency in Python, including testing (pytest) and packaging; PySpark experience preferred.

• Strong SQL and dimensional modeling expertise, including serving governed datasets to BI tools.

• Experience building REST API and SaaS ingestion pipelines, including handling pagination, rate limits, schema drift, and credential rotation.

• Experience with Git-based CI/CD workflows; Azure DevOps is a plus.

• Experience using AI-assisted development tools, with sound judgment in reviewing, testing, and validating generated code before deployment.

• Experience building Lakeflow pipelines, managed connectors, entity resolution, or record linkage is a plus.

• Experience managing the Azure resources that support a data platform (Databricks workspace administration, storage, Key Vault and secrets, service principals, networking), ideally as infrastructure-as-code, is a plus.

What We’ll Provide

• An opportunity to do challenging, dynamic, highly rewarding work with an inspiring mission.

• A team of intelligent, creative, and dedicated immigration professionals who value respectful, collaborative working relationships.
Inclusive firm culture celebrating diverse perspectives, backgrounds, identities, and experiences.

• People-centered workplace policies and flexible work schedules, including remote work opportunities.

• Competitive compensation, health/dental/vision/life insurance benefits, a 401(k)-retirement savings plan with employer-matching, and generous paid time off.

• Employees working in person at our Troy or Ann Arbor offices enjoy casual attire, lots of free food, and regular opportunities for exposure to international cuisine and culture.

Does this position, and our culture, seem like a good fit for you? If so, we would love to speak with you about joining the Ellis Porter team!

Ellis Porter provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

NON-SOLICITATION STATEMENT: No agencies please. Ellis Porter (EP) recruits candidates exclusively utilizing our internal Talent Acquisition team. EP does not accept any liability for fees for resumes from recruiters or employment agencies (“Agency”), without a binding, written recruitment agreement between EP and Agency describing the services and specific job openings (“Agreement”). EP may consider any candidate for whom an Agency has submitted an unsolicited resume and explicitly reserves the right to hire those candidate(s) without any financial obligation to the Agency, unless an Agreement is in place. Any email or verbal contacts with any person within EP is inadequate to create a binding agreement. Agencies without an Agreement are requested not to contact any employees of EP with recruiting inquiries or resumes.