Senior Specialist, Data Engineer

Job Description

The Opportunity

• Based in Hyderabad, join a global healthcare biopharma company and be part of a 130- year legacy of success backed by ethical integrity, forward momentum, and an inspiring mission to achieve new milestones in global healthcare.
• Be part of an organisation driven by digital technology and data-backed approaches that support a diversified portfolio of prescription medicines, vaccines, and animal health products.
• Drive innovation and execution excellence. Be a part of a team with passion for using data, analytics, and insights to drive decision-making, and which creates custom software, allowing us to tackle some of the world's greatest health threats.

Our Technology Centres focus on creating a space where teams can come together to deliver business solutions that save and improve lives. An integral part of our company’s IT operating model, Tech Centres are globally distributed locations where each IT division has employees to enable our digital transformation journey and drive business outcomes. These locations, in addition to the other sites, are essential to supporting our business and strategy.

A focused group of leaders in each Tech Centre helps to ensure we can manage and improve each location, from investing in growth, success, and well-being of our people, to making sure colleagues from each IT division feel a sense of belonging to managing critical emergencies. And together, we must leverage the strength of our team to collaborate globally to optimize connections and share best practices across the Tech Centres.

Role Overview

Data Engineer -Senior Specialist/DBT SME

The Senior Data Engineer will design, build, and optimize our modern data stack with a strong focus on DBT Cloud, GitHub‑based CI/CD, and AI‑driven automation for data modelling and data engineering processes.

You will be a leader across data engineering team responsible for defining DBT architecture, standardizing development patterns, and introducing intelligent automation (e.g., code generation, metadata‑driven modelling, quality checks) to scale our data platform.

This role is ideal for someone who is equally comfortable with hands‑on data engineering, deployment & release pipelines, and architecting best practices for DBT models and workflows.

What will you do in this role

• DBT Architecture & Modelling
  • Design and maintain DBT Cloud project architecture, environments, and deployment workflows.
  • Develop and optimize DBT models, tests, macros, and materializations aligned with scalable data modelling standards.
• AI‑Driven Automation
  • Implement AI/LLM‑powered tooling for generating and refactoring DBT models, tests, and documentation.
  • Build metadata‑driven templates and automation to reduce manual engineering effort and improve consistency.
• CI/CD, Deployment & Releasing
  • Define and manage GitHub branching strategy, pull request workflows, and release practices for DBT projects.
  • Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitHub Actions) for automated testing, validation, and deployment to DBT Cloud.
• Data Engineering & Platform Integration
  • Design and implement reliable data pipelines into the data warehouse/Lakehouse using SQL and Python.
  • Integrate DBT with orchestration, monitoring, and data quality frameworks; ensure platform performance and reliability.
• Collaboration
  • Act as subject matter expert for DBT Cloud, data modelling, and AI‑assisted engineering practices.
  • Mentor engineers and partner with Analytics / Data Science teams to translate business requirements into robust data solutions.

What should you have

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent experience
• Experience
  • 7-11 years in data engineering on modern cloud data platforms.
  • 2+ years hands‑on with dbt (Cloud or Core) including complex models, tests, macros, and multi‑env setups.
  • Proven experience designing and operating CI/CD pipelines and Git-based workflows (GitHub preferred).
• Technical Skills
  • Expert‑level SQL and strong data modelling skills (star schema, incremental patterns, SCDs).
  • Proficiency in Python for data pipelines and automation.
  • Hands‑on with at least one cloud data warehouse/lakehouse (e.g., Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Databricks, Synapse).
  • Strong understanding of dbt Cloud concepts (jobs, environments, permissions, logs, artifacts).
  • Experience implementing data quality and testing (DBT tests, and/or tools like Great Expectations).
  • Practical exposure to AI/LLM‑based tools in engineering workflows (code generation, code review, documentation, or automation).
  • Familiarity with orchestration tools (Airflow) and integration with DBT.
  • Comfortable with CI/CD tools (GitHub Actions ).
• Soft Skills
  • Strong communication and ability to work cross‑functionally with technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
  • Mentoring mindset and ability to set and enforce engineering standards.
  • Bias toward automation, reliability, and continuous improvement.

Our technology teams operate as business partners, proposing ideas and innovative solutions that enable new organizational capabilities. We collaborate internationally to deliver services and solutions that help everyone be more productive and enable innovation.

Who we are

We are known as Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, New Jersey, USA in the United States and Canada and MSD everywhere else. For more than a century, we have been bringing forward medicines and vaccines for many of the world's most challenging diseases.

Today, our company continues to be at the forefront of research to deliver innovative health solutions and advance the prevention and treatment of diseases that threaten people and animals around the world.

What we look for

Imagine getting up in the morning for a job as important as helping to save and improve lives around the world. Here, you have that opportunity. You can put your empathy, creativity, digital mastery, or scientific genius to work in collaboration with a diverse group of colleagues who pursue and bring hope to countless people who are battling some of the most challenging diseases of our time. Our team is constantly evolving, so if you are among the intellectually curious, join us—and start making your impact today.

#HYDIT2026

Required Skills:

Build Tools, Business Intelligence (BI), Database Administration, Data Building Tool, Data Engineering, Data Management, Data Modeling, Data Modeling Tools, Data Visualization, Design Applications, Information Management, Software Development, Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), System Designs

Preferred Skills:

Current Employees apply HERE

Current Contingent Workers apply HERE

Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully 
Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company.  No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails. 

Employee Status:

Regular

Relocation:

VISA Sponsorship:

Travel Requirements:

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Hybrid

Shift:

Valid Driving License:

Hazardous Material(s):

Job Posting End Date:

02/9/2026

*A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFORE the listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date.