Analytics Engineer - SQLMesh (Contactor)

Analytics Engineer - 6-Month Contract

£400 per day (Inside IR35)REMOTE anywhere in the UK Start: 1st May

A growing data team within the digital/consumer sector is looking for a SQL-first Analytics Engineer to help build out a robust, scalable analytics layer. You'll be joining a small, collaborative team focused on strengthening data models, improving governance, and laying the foundations for AI-driven analytics.

This role sits at the intersection of data modelling, analytics engineering, and modern AI-enablement. You'll transform raw data into well-structured, trusted datasets that support decision-making across the business - while also helping shape a semantic layer designed for future AI and LLM-powered use cases.

You'll be joining at a pivotal moment: the platform is in place, proof-of-concepts are underway, and the team needs someone who can own modelling, testing and semantic design from day one.

• Designing and building clean, scalable data models for analytics, reporting, and self-serve
• Writing highly efficient SQL to transform raw data into business-ready datasets
• Using SQLMesh (or similar frameworks such as dbt) to orchestrate transformations
• Working with stakeholders to understand key business questions and model data accordingly
• Improving data quality, testing, documentation and governance
• Contributing to the development of a strong semantic layer to support AI/LLM adoption
• Exploring opportunities to integrate AI into analytics workflows and automation
• Ensuring data structures, metadata and context enable accurate natural-language querying
• Understanding downstream impact - supporting analysts, engineers and business users

• Strong SQL-first mindset - SQL as your primary problem-solving tool
• Proven experience with transformation frameworks (SQLMesh, dbt, or similar)
• Solid understanding of data modelling principles and trade-offs
• Experience building models in cloud data warehouses (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, etc.)
• Ability to design intuitive, business-friendly datasets
• Understanding of data architecture and how layers fit together
• Curious, pragmatic, collaborative - comfortable working in a small team
• Strong communication skills and willingness to ask for support when needed

• Experience designing data models to support AI/ML or LLM-based analytics
• Interest in using AI tools to enhance developer productivity
• Exposure to semantic layers or metrics layers
• Experience with customer data
• Ability to make thoughtful, real-world trade-offs in data design

The team is scaling up its engineering capability and investing heavily in AI-driven analytics. They've brought in another contractor and are now looking for someone who can:

• Strengthen and extend existing data models
• Build a robust semantic layer
• Support AI proof-of-concepts
• Improve governance and testing
• Ensure analytics models are reliable, well-documented and scalable

This role will be critical in shaping how the business uses data - both operationally and through new AI-enabled workflows.

• 1-hour interview with the Data Lead
• Skills assessment focused on SQL, modelling, and analytics engineering
• Immediate availability - interviews scheduled this week

• £400 per day
• Inside IR35
• 6-month contract
• Remote
• Start: End of April / 1 May