Principal Microsoft Data & AI Engineer

Title: Principal Microsoft Data & AI Engineer

Location: Minneapolis, MN

Alternative Locations: Chandler, AZ , Irving, TX and Charlotte

Duration: 18 months

Work Engagement: W2

Work Schedule: Hybrid 3 days in office/2 days remote

Benefits on offer for this contract position: Health Insurance, Life insurance, 401K and Voluntary Benefits

Summary:

In this contingent resource assignment, you may: Consult as an expert to develop or influence initiatives and resources for highly complex business and technical needs across Engineering. Consult on the strategy and resolution of highly complex and unique challenges requiring in-depth evaluation across multiple areas, delivering solutions that are long-term, large-scale and require vision, creativity, innovation, and advanced analytical and inductive thinking. Provide expertise to client senior leadership on innovative Engineering business solutions. Strategically engage with client personnel.

Seeking a Principal Microsoft Data & AI Engineer who combines advanced SQL and Microsoft Fabric expertise with hands-on data engineering, data wrangling, analytical modeling, and practical experience using generative AI tools to accelerate data analysis and solution development.

Seeking a senior, hands-on data engineer to design and deliver trusted data products for workforce
analytics, operational reporting, executive decision-making, and AI-assisted analysis. The role requires
deep Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Fabric expertise, advanced data modeling skills to create
reusable analytical models for hypothesis testing and analysis, strong data integration capabilities,
practical experience using AI tools for data work, and advanced Excel proficiency.
This is a senior, hands-on engineering role. The resource will be expected to take ownership of complex
data problems from initial source assessment through ingestion, transformation, data quality validation,
modeling, documentation, and delivery of analysis-ready data products. The ideal candidate can work
effectively with both established enterprise data sources and less-structured, authorized inputs such as
Excel workbooks, email-delivered files, exported reports, APIs, and approved web-based data sources.
The environment is primarily within the Microsoft ecosystem. Microsoft SQL Server is the core database
platform, Microsoft Fabric is heavily used for data engineering and analytics, and Azure will support the
team’s Operational Data Store. Power BI and Excel are key consumption tools.

Primary Responsibilities:
• Design, build, test, deploy, and support scalable data ingestion, transformation, and integration
solutions using Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Fabric.
• Develop reusable ETL and ELT processes that move data from authorized enterprise systems into
governed analytical data stores and semantic models.
• Write and optimize advanced SQL, including complex queries, stored procedures, views,
transformations, and performance-tuned processing routines.
• Design relational, dimensional, semantic, and analytical data models that support Power BI, Excel,
human analysis, and approved AI-assisted analysis

Design enterprise data models using repository-driven standards and Medallion methodology to deliver
governed, high-quality, analytics-ready data assets.
• Integrate structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data from databases, Excel, CSV files,
email-delivered files, APIs, exported reports, and authorized web-based sources.
• Create controlled, repeatable processes for nonstandard data sources with validation, reconciliation,
traceability, and error handling.
• Profile data, identify quality issues, determine root causes, and implement remediation or monitoring
controls.
• Build curated, analysis-ready datasets and semantic models for Power BI, Excel, analysts, and approved
AI tools.
• Use approved generative AI tools to assist with data analysis, SQL and code development,
documentation, testing, troubleshooting, and prompt-based workflows.
• Validate AI-generated SQL, code, calculations, summaries, and analytical conclusions before use.
• Translate business and analytical needs into clear data requirements, technical designs, and usable
data products.
• Follow applicable data governance, privacy, information security, risk, and compliance requirements.

Required Qualifications:

· Applicants must be authorized to work for ANY employer in the U.S. This position is not eligible for visa sponsorship.

• 7 years of progressively responsible experience in data engineering, database engineering, analytics
engineering, data integration, or a related discipline.
• Advanced hands-on Microsoft SQL Server and complex SQL development experience.
• Experience designing and delivering reusable ETL or ELT pipelines.
• Hands-on Microsoft Fabric experience or strong experience with a comparable modern cloud data
platform.
• Strong knowledge of relational, dimensional, semantic, and analytical data modeling.
• Experience designing enterprise data models using repository-driven standards and Medallion
methodology to create governed, high-quality, analytics-ready data assets.
• Experience integrating enterprise data with nonstandard sources such as Excel, files, APIs,
email-delivered data, exported reports, or authorized website data.
• Demonstrated data profiling, validation, reconciliation, and data quality problem-solving experience.
• Advanced Excel skills, including Power Query, data models, PivotTables, advanced formulas, and
external data connections.
• Experience preparing data for Power BI, Excel, human analysts, or AI-assisted analytical workflows.
• Working knowledge of source control, code review, testing, release management, and production
support.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to explain technical designs, assumptions, limitations, and
findings to nontechnical stakeholders.
• Ability to work independently and manage ambiguity in a complex, regulated enterprise environment.

AI Experience:

Candidates should have practical, work-related experience with one or more AI-assisted engineering or

productivity tools, such as Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Microsoft Cowork, Devin,

Visual Studio Code with approved AI extensions, or other enterprise-approved LLM tools.

• Developing and refining prompts for data discovery, analysis, SQL generation, testing, documentation,

and interpretation of results.

• Providing schema context, definitions, examples, constraints, and expected output formats within

prompts.

• Validating AI-generated SQL, calculations, code, summaries, and analytical conclusions.

• Recognizing hallucinations, unsupported conclusions, incorrect assumptions, and data leakage risk.

• Creating repeatable prompt templates or AI-assisted workflows that improve analyst productivity.

Preferred Qualifications:
Third-Party Recruiting Vendor Brief Page 4
• Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse, Warehouse, Data Factory, Dataflows Gen2, notebooks, or semantic model
experience.
• Azure SQL, Azure Data Lake Storage, Azure Data Factory, or related Azure data services.
• Python, PySpark, PowerShell, or another data transformation and automation language.
• Power BI experience, including semantic models, DAX, Power Query, performance optimization, and
executive reporting.
• Power Apps or Power Automate experience.
• Databricks, Delta Lake, Spark, medallion architecture, or comparable lakehouse experience.
• Experience supporting both traditional business intelligence and AI-based analysis.
• Experience with APIs, JSON, XML, HTML parsing, browser automation, or approved web data extraction.
• Experience working with confidential or sensitive data in a regulated environment.
• GitHub, Azure DevOps, ServiceNow, CI/CD, or automated testing experience.