BI & Analytics Engineer

Contract Type: Direct 1099 Independent Contractor

Eligibility: Candidates must be able to contract directly as an individual (1099). We are unable to accommodate Corp-to-Corp (C2C) , third-party agencies, employer-sponsored arrangements, or W2 status for this engagement.

Our client - a leading U.S. retail company is looking for a BI/Analytics Engineer to support and evolve a mature analytics ecosystem built primarily on Power BI, with a modern cloud data platform underneath. This is not a ticket-execution BI role: the client's analytics strategy is actively shifting toward AI-augmented analytics, including conversational and agentic data access tools, and they want an engineer who is curious about - and ideally hands-on with - that new wave of tooling. You'll own semantic models, keep an extensive portfolio of existing Power BI assets healthy, and help shape how business users interact with data in an AI-first future. This role also requires someone comfortable operating with a high degree of autonomy in front of business stakeholders - this isn't a background execution seat.

Location: Remote. Strong preference for candidates residing in the Northeast U.S.

• New York
• Pennsylvania
• New Jersey
• Virginia
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• North Carolina
• Delaware
• Connecticut
• Washington, D.C

Team context: You'll work alongside internal analytics and data teams, operating as a well-rounded generalist rather than a narrowly scoped specialist.

Tasks and Deliverables:

• Support, maintain, and extend an extensive portfolio of existing Power BI reports, dashboards, and data models.
• Own and develop the semantic layer and reporting on the client's cloud data platform.
• Build and optimize new data models to serve evolving business needs.
• Contribute to the adoption and evaluation of AI-driven and agentic analytics tools (e.g., conversational data access for business users).
• Context-switch across analytics engineering tasks - modeling, reporting, data quality, and stakeholder requests - rather than executing a fixed backlog.
• Collaborate with data engineering and business stakeholders directly and autonomously to translate needs into reliable, well-modeled analytics assets.

Required Experience:

• Extensive hands-on experience with Power BI, including data modeling, DAX, and supporting/maintaining a large existing asset base. (This should be the strongest part of your profile - lean BI over pure data engineering.)
• Strong SQL proficiency.
• Proficiency in Python for analytics/data workflows.
• Experience with a modern cloud data platform - Microsoft Fabric, Azure Synapse, Azure Data Factory (ADF), or Databricks are all acceptable;
• A generalist analytics engineering mindset: comfortable owning problems end-to-end and switching contexts across tasks.
• Demonstrated ability to communicate and manage stakeholder relationships autonomously, without close oversight—this is a hard requirement, not a soft skill footnote.

Nice to Have:

• Hands-on experience specifically with Microsoft Fabric (semantic layer, reporting).
• Familiarity or hands-on experimentation with AI/agentic analytics tools such as Databricks Genie, Fabric AI capabilities (e.g., Copilot), Sigma, ThoughtSpot, or Snowflake Cortex -demonstrated curiosity counts as much as formal project experience.
• Interest in the future direction of data science work (customer insights, marketing attribution).

Engagement Highlights:

• Work at the front edge of the industry shift from traditional BI to AI-augmented and conversational analytics.
• High-trust, generalist role with real ownership of the semantic layer - not a ticket factory.
• Mature, well-invested analytics environment (extensive Power BI estate, Microsoft Fabric platform).
• Potential path to full-time conversion for the right candidate.
• Long-term roadmap includes expansion into customer insights and marketing attribution data science.