The Bulwark · 3 days ago
Fractional Data Engineer (Consultant)
Washington, DC
Contract
Onsite
Mid, Senior Level
4+ years expThe Bulwark is a fast-growing media company focused on defending liberal democracy through independent analysis. They are seeking a fractional Data Engineer (consultant) to establish the data infrastructure essential for audience growth and sustainability, involving both initial project phases and ongoing support.
Online Media
Responsibilities
Audit existing data sources and ingestion pathways across Snowflake, Substack, web/app analytics, and other platforms
Design a source-of-truth schema for subscriber, engagement, and revenue data
Build or refine ingestion and transformation processes using Snowflake SQL (and adjacent tooling)
Create clear, durable definitions for key business metrics (subscriber value, engagement, retention, attribution, cohort logic, etc.)
Develop an actionable metrics dictionary and documentation set to ensure consistency across teams
Build baseline retention, attribution, funnel, and cohort analyses to inform growth strategy
Work with our Business Ops Manager to improve dashboards and reporting
Document data sources, logic, assumptions, and workflow diagrams to make systems transparent and maintainable
Maintain and refine existing pipelines as needed
Run recurring analyses (e.g., monthly retention/cohort review, channel performance updates)
Provide ad-hoc exploratory analyses tied to audience growth or subscription trends
Troubleshoot instrumentation or backend data flow questions
Provide light mentorship to Growth/Business Ops on SQL, data literacy, and analytic approaches
Qualification
Required
4+ years of hands-on experience in data engineering, analytics engineering, or analytics (subscription media or consumer product experience strongly preferred)
Strong SQL skills, ideally with Snowflake experience
Experience stitching together disparate or imperfect datasets—and comfort navigating constraints on platforms like Substack
Familiarity with analytics/visualization tools (Tableau, Looker, Geckoboard, Mode, Metabase, or similar)
Ability to work independently, communicate clearly, and produce high-quality work with limited oversight
A problem-solver's mindset and a bias toward building durable, lightweight systems rather than over-engineered ones
Preferred
Experience designing subscriber attribution or cohort frameworks
Experience building LTV or churn models
Experience helping non-technical teams improve their data fluency
Company
The Bulwark
The Bulwark was founded to provide analysis and reporting in defense of America’s liberal democracy. We publish written articles and newsletters.
11-50 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Early StageCompany data provided by crunchbase