Senior Data Modeler
Location: McLean, VA (hybrid) | Contract to Hire
About the role
We're looking for a Senior Data Modeler to design and steward the data structures behind our mortgage, securitization, and risk platforms. You'll partner with data architects, engineers, business analysts, and risk/finance stakeholders to translate complex business concepts into durable, well-governed data models — and you'll be the person who can explain those models clearly to both a database engineer and a VP who doesn't want to see an ERD.
What you'll do
- Design conceptual, logical, and physical data models for enterprise data warehouse, data lake, and operational systems
- Lead requirements sessions with business and technical stakeholders; turn ambiguous asks into documented, agreed-upon models
- Apply dimensional (Kimball), 3NF, and Data Vault 2.0 techniques as appropriate to the use case
- Define and enforce naming standards, metadata, data lineage, and modeling governance
- Partner with data governance on data quality rules, business glossary, and critical data element definitions
- Review models produced by other team members and mentor junior modelers
- Support migration of legacy models to modern cloud platforms (AWS, Snowflake)
- Document models and decisions so they remain usable after you've moved on to the next project
Required qualifications
- 8+ years in data modeling, data architecture, or a closely related role
- Deep expertise in conceptual/logical/physical modeling and normalization
- Hands-on with a modeling tool (erwin, ER/Studio, SqlDBM, or similar)
- Strong SQL; comfortable profiling data to validate assumptions
- Experience with cloud data platforms (Snowflake, Redshift, Databricks, or equivalent)
- Exceptional written and verbal communication — you can run a workshop with non-technical stakeholders, defend a design decision in an architecture review, and write documentation people actually read
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or equivalent experience
Preferred qualifications
- Financial services experience, especially mortgage, capital markets, or credit risk
- Familiarity with MISMO standards, loan-level data, or securitization data structures
- Data Vault 2.0 certification
- Experience with dbt, Collibra, Alation, or similar governance/transformation tooling
- Exposure to regulatory reporting (CECL, CCAR) data requirements
Work Authorization
- Must be authorized to work in the U.S. for any employer without current or future visa sponsorship
What sets a great candidate apart
The strongest people in this role aren't just technically excellent — they're translators. They can sit with a business SME for an hour, ask the right questions, and walk out with a model that captures what the business actually means, not just what it said.
Pay: $65.00 - $75.00 per hour
Benefits:
- Dental insurance
- Health insurance
Work Location: In person
