The role is based in Los Angeles
Since opening our doors in 2007, sweetgreen has been on a mission to build healthier communities, starting with real food. As we build our digital platform and continue to scale, we are looking for a Lead Data Engineer to architect and lead the development of robust data infrastructure and pipelines for our Marketing and Finance departments. The role is crucial in overseeing the design and implementation of scalable data systems with a strong emphasis on reliability, performance, and data quality. You will be responsible for delivering innovative data engineering solutions that empower our teams with accessible and trustworthy data, while also maturing our capabilities based on your vision for the space.
At sweetgreen, a Lead Data Engineer is more than a pipeline builder. This role is not about "tell me what to build, and I'll create the ETL", this role is about guiding the team in architecting and implementing the right data solutions for our customers and company. Lead Data Engineers are trusted partners to business stakeholders and their teammates and play an important role in driving the collection, transformation, and availability of sweetgreen's data. They are responsible for delivering key infrastructure and data pipelines to power decision making throughout the business. They work with our data analysts and business partners to deliver on our roadmap of data products, new ingestion methods and transformations, and surfacing reliable data sets to ensure that our business teams are empowered to take action against data.
• Advanced Data Architecture and Infrastructure Leadership — Design and implement complex data architectures and scalable infrastructure solutions that support strategic business initiatives and enable competitive advantage. Lead the technical vision for data platform evolution.
• Leadership in Pipeline Development and Optimization — Lead the development and optimization of advanced data pipelines and ETL/ELT processes, ensuring they deliver reliable, performant data flows that align with senior management's strategic needs and SLA requirements.
• Data Engineering and Quality Assurance — Oversee data ingestion, transformation, and storage processes, ensuring high standards of data reliability, performance, and security. Implement and maintain data engineering best practices and monitoring to ensure data quality across the organization.
• Technical Leadership and Mentorship — Act as a technical leader and mentor to data engineering team members and cross-functional partners. Guide architectural decisions and recommend data engineering strategies. Facilitate cross-departmental collaboration to ensure alignment of data engineering initiatives with organizational goals.
• Innovation and Technical Excellence — Lead initiatives to improve and innovate data engineering processes, tools, and infrastructure. Drive the adoption of new technologies and methodologies to enhance data capabilities, system performance, and business outcomes.
• Leading future state — Stay updated on industry best practices, emerging technologies, and architectural patterns to drive innovation and maintain a competitive edge in the market. Foster a culture of learning and experimentation within the team.
• 5+ years of experience in data engineering, data platform development, or a related field, preferably in Marketing or Growth Analytics environments
• Technical leadership mindset and ability to architect scalable and maintainable data solutions that serve diverse business needs
• Strong proficiency in Python and SQL for data processing, transformation, and pipeline development
• Extensive experience with DBT for data transformation and modeling, including advanced features and best practices
• Deep knowledge of Snowflake for data warehousing, including optimization, security, and cost management
• Background knowledge of Astronomer (Apache Airflow) for workflow orchestration is a plus
• Ability to design and operationalize efficient data architectures, including modern data stack components, cloud-native solutions, and data mesh principles
• Track record of delivering scalable data engineering solutions that support analytics, machine learning, and operational use cases
• Experience with the AWS cloud platform and infrastructure as code practices
• Passionate about food. Ideally, you know what you eat, and you realize how important it is to connect people and communities to real food.
Come join the sweetlife!
About sweetgreen
sweetgreen is on a mission to build healthier communities by connecting people to real food. We passionately believe that real food should be convenient and accessible to everyone. Every day in each sweetgreen, our 3,500 team members make food from scratch, using fresh ingredients and produce delivered that morning. And in our local communities, we’re committed to leaving people better than we found them. We’re in the business of feeding people, and we’re out to change what that means.
sweetgreen provides equal opportunities for everyone that works for us and everyone that applies to join our team, without regard to sex or gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, pregnancy, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, any service, past, present, or future, in the uniformed services of the United States (military or veteran status), or any other consideration protected by federal, state, or local law.
sweetgreen participates in the federal government's E-Verify program to determine employment eligibility. To learn more about the E-Verify program, please click here.
Founded in 2007, sweetgreen is a destination for simple, seasonal, healthy food. We believe the choices we make about what we eat, where it comes from and how it’s prepared have a direct and powerful impact on the health of individuals, communities and the environment. That’s why we’re building a transparent supply network, why we cook from scratch, and why we’re building a community of people who support real food.
We’re in the business of feeding people, and we’re out to change what that means.
These six core values embody our culture, spirit and dedication to doing what’s right. They keep us aligned and help us make decisions about everything from the food we serve to the way we design our stores.
create solutions where the company wins, the customer wins, the community wins.
make decisions that last longer than you will.
cultivate authentic food and relationships.
create meaningful connections every day
leave people better than you found them.
celebrate your passion and your purpose.
Our mission is to inspire healthier communities by connecting people to real food. We know that sweetgreen is a critical link between growers and consumers, and we feel a responsibility to protect the future of real food. To that end, we’re committed to supporting small and mid-size growers who are farming sustainably, to creating transparency around what’s in your food and where it came from, and to creating more accessibility to healthy, real food for more people. Because here at sweetgreen, impact is not an arm of our business, it is our business, and it permeates everything we do, from what we source to who we hire and how we support local communities. We want to make an impact and leave people better than we found them, and we tailor our approach in each market to reflect the needs of the community.