Data Engineer (First hire!)

Job Description

Job Description

Leland’s mission is to unlock human potential by making the world’s expertise more accessible. We do that through a platform that connects people with coaching, content, and courses that can can help them achieve their most ambitious career and educational goals. Since our founding in 2021, we’ve helped tens of thousands of people reach their most ambitious goals, raised $19M from world-class investors, and built the industry leader in educational and career coaching.

We’re looking for our first ever data hire to design and own the data foundation at Leland. You’ll transform product and business data (MongoDB, Posthog, Stripe, Hubspot, etc.) into a reliable, documented analytics layer that powers decisions across the company. Your work will let our Ops, Finance, and Growth teams answer their own questions with confidence, while also giving leadership clear visibility into metrics like revenue, take-rate, CAC, and conversion funnels. If you’re excited to model complex data into clean, reliable structures, enable self-serve analytics, and set the standards for a high-growth startup’s data culture, we’d love to chat.

What You'll Do :

Model the warehouse for usability by creating curated, documented tables that make product and order data accessible.

Define the semantic / metrics layer with governed, consistent definitions for key metrics like bookings, take-rate, customer channel attribution, and funnel conversion.

Manage ingestion and orchestration from sources like MongoDB, Posthog, Stripe, Hubspot, and Sendbird into our warehouse with daily / hourly freshness.

Advocate for analytics in engineering design. Be the voice of downstream data needs in conversations about schemas and product data models.

Define and enforce data contracts. Set and maintain standards for event tracking, field requirements, and tests so data stays consistent and reliable.

Guarantee quality and lineage through tests, monitoring, and observability.

Enable self-serve by publishing user-friendly marts, templates, and training for non-technical teams.

Deliver insights and dashboards while self-serve capabilities mature.

Establish conventions, tools, and practices that will guide future data hires.

Qualifications :

5+ years in data engineering or analytics engineering with deep warehouse modeling and SQL expertise.

Proven experience with a modern cloud data warehouse ( Databricks, Snowflake, BigQuery, or similar ) and dbt in production.

Strong track record of building semantic / metrics layers and governed datasets used across multiple teams.

Experience designing event tracking plans and data contracts with product / engineering partners.

Demonstrated use of testing, observability, and lineage tools to ensure data quality.

Clear communicator who can explain data concepts to SQL novices and collaborate with business stakeholders to unlock value through broad-based data access.

Action-oriented professional who proactively seeks out projects that drive value through increasing data accessibility and insights.

Nice to Have Experience :

Familiarity with Databricks / Delta Lake (our current environment).

Experience with Hubspot, Stripe, or Posthog pipelines.

BI experience with tools like Looker, Hex, Sigma, or Mode.

Python for lightweight transforms and tests.

Early-stage or “first data hire” experience.

Why Leland?

Join a high-growth consumer startup focused on helping people achieve their goals by connecting them with expert coaches

Opportunity to take part in building a world-class team

A collaborative, high-energy environment where your contributions have a direct impact

The chance to join a passionate team helping people achieve their career and educational dreams

Leland is an equal opportunity employer. We encourage candidates of all backgrounds and demographics to apply.