Hire data engineers · Dedicated, monthly
Hire data engineers who start in 5 to 10 days.
Engineers who build the pipelines, warehouses and models behind your reporting and AI features, and keep them correct when the source data changes. Vetted in five steps, working in your tools and time zone, with a two-week replacement guarantee.
1 senior data engineer · 160 hours a month
from $4,400/month
All-inclusive, no recruitment fee, two-week replacement guarantee.
Monthly rates
| Level | Experience | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Mid-level | 3 to 5 years | $3,400 to $4,400 |
| Senior | 5 to 8 years | $4,400 to $6,200 |
| Lead | 8+ years | $6,200 to $7,800 |
Full-time, 160 hours a month, equipment and HR included. Hourly equivalents $21 to $49. No recruitment fee.
What our data engineers bring.
- Python and SQL
- Airflow, Dagster, Prefect
- dbt
- Spark
- Kafka
- Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, PostgreSQL
- Data modelling
- CDC and ELT (Fivetran, Airbyte)
- Data quality and observability
- Terraform for data infrastructure
When teams hire this role from us.
- Replace cron jobs and spreadsheets with a warehouse, dbt models and scheduled pipelines your analysts can trust
- Sync CRM, ad platform and product data into one model without double counting across runs
- Build the ingestion and feature pipelines an AI product depends on, with freshness alerts and tests
From brief to first commit.
- 01
Brief
Tell us the stack, seniority and start date. 15 minutes on a call or a short form.
- 02
Shortlist in 48 hours
Two or three profiles with CVs, code samples and interview notes.
- 03
Interview
You interview them your way. Technical test optional; we already ran ours.
- 04
Start in 5 to 10 days
Access, onboarding and first stand-up in your hours. Two-week replacement guarantee.
Five steps before you see a profile.
Two-week free replacement if an engineer is not the right fit, and a 30-day notice to scale down.
- 01CV and portfolio screen against the role brief
- 02Technical interview with a senior engineer in the same stack
- 03Live coding or take-home exercise reviewed for quality, not speed
- 04English communication and async-writing check
- 05Reference check and background verification before onboarding
What a data engineer does on our teams
A data engineer on our team owns the path from source systems to a model your analysts and AI features can trust. They build ELT with Fivetran, Airbyte or custom connectors and model the warehouse in dbt with tests on every layer. They schedule it in Airflow or Dagster. Freshness and volume alerts make sure a silent failure upstream does not become a wrong number in a board deck. On TamTracker, a B2B market intelligence SaaS, the team built an event-driven sync pipeline that pulls daily from nine advertising, CRM, email and analytics APIs through SQS and ECS Fargate. Delta-based signal maths stops engagement being double counted across runs. A dead-letter queue with retries and one-at-a-time concurrency respects partner rate limits. On Edge OCR, an AI document processing platform, they built a queue-based extraction pipeline on AWS Lambda with processing, in-flight and dead-letter queues so bulk uploads are never processed twice or dropped.
How we assess data engineers
- SQL and modelling: designing a star schema for a realistic subscription business, writing window functions and explaining why a query is slow
- Pipeline design: incremental loads, late-arriving data, backfills, idempotency and what happens when a source API renames a field
- Operations: data quality tests, freshness alerts, warehouse cost control and the runbook for a failed nightly run
- Take-home: build an incremental dbt model over a supplied raw dataset with tests, documentation and a short note on how it would be scheduled and monitored
| Comparison | Innovation Insight | Toptal-style marketplace | Local hire |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost (senior) | $4,400 to $6,200, all-inclusive | $9,000 to $15,000 plus fees | $14,000 to $20,000 plus benefits and overhead |
| Time to start | 5 to 10 business days | 1 to 3 weeks | 6 to 12 weeks |
| Replacement | Free within two weeks, 30-day notice after | Trial period, then re-match | Notice period and a new recruitment cycle |
| Who manages | You, with our delivery lead on call | You | You |
Building a whole data platform rather than adding one engineer? See our data and AI service and the TamTracker case study.
What it's like to work with us.
Unedited, from founders and product leads who trusted us with their roadmap.
Innovation Insight has been a game-changer for our platform. Their expertise in UX/UI design and seamless technical integration helped us enhance user engagement, and their attention to detail ensured a flawless experience. We're beyond satisfied with the outcome and their commitment to our vision.
VonzaSaaS · Creator economyWorking with Innovation Insight felt like a true collaboration. Their team was responsive, creative, and focused on delivering results that matched our brand identity. Thanks to them, we now have a solution that not only meets our needs but exceeds expectations. Highly recommended!
MatterbooksPublishing · MediaInnovation Insight provided us with an innovative and scalable solution that transformed the way we manage our operations. Their approach to problem-solving, combined with their deep understanding of technology, made them an invaluable partner. The results speak for themselves.
SolasEnterprise · OperationsHiring data engineers, answered.
Which warehouse do you recommend?
Snowflake or BigQuery for most teams, Redshift when you are already deep in AWS, and PostgreSQL when the data is under a few hundred gigabytes. We recommend after a look at your sources and query patterns.
Can a remote data engineer work with our analytics team?
Yes. They work in your warehouse, dbt project and Git repository, overlap at least four hours with your time zone and raise pull requests your analysts review.
Do they handle the infrastructure too?
Yes, for the data stack: warehouse, orchestration, Kafka topics, IAM and networking, written as Terraform. For the wider cloud setup we add a DevOps engineer.
Other roles
Prefer a managed project? See our ai and data solutions service.