Job Description

Job ID: 288055
Location Name: CA-FSC SF Off (0174)
Address: 350 Mission St, 20th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105, United States (US)
Job Type: Full Time
Position Type: Regular
Job Function: Information Technology
Work Location: Hybrid - San Francisco, CA

Belong to Something Beautiful

At Sephora, beauty is about feeling seen, valued, and empowered, individually and collectively. It is connecting deeply with others, celebrating diversity and inclusivity, unlocking your potential, and making a difference every day. Together, we belong to something beautiful. 

Ready for a career glow up? As a Lead Engineer you will design and implement innovative analytical solutions and work alongside the product engineering team, evaluating new features and architecture. Reporting to the Director, Engineering, Data & AI you will work closely with other team members like data architects, data engineers, report developers, product and business analysts to understand what the business is trying to achieve, move data from source to target, and design optimal data models. You will be also responsible for building and maintaining reporting capabilities in the data platform that will feed data from the data models. This hands-on technical role demands excellency with AI/ML concepts and their integration into data engineering pipelines. Come be a part of a team that is starting this new journey.

What You'll Do:

• Lead, design, and implement innovative analytical solutions using advanced SQL, Databricks, Tableau, Cognos, SSAS Cubes, ETL tools, and other Big Data technologies, while monitoring and optimizing BI system performance to ensure efficient data retrieval, processing, and reporting.
• Drive data quality and cost efficiency by implementing quality control processes to ensure the accuracy of data, dashboards, and reports, while enforcing cost optimization strategies across the data platform to minimize compute and storage costs.
• Perform detailed analysis of business problems and technical environments to design high-quality technical solutions, converting business functionalities into actionable technical strategy.
• Drive the adoption of AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor) and automation platforms to enhance engineering productivity, solution quality, and agentic workflow initiatives.
• Collaborate with business stakeholders, data analysts, developers, and IT teams to understand requirements and deliver solutions that meet their needs — translating complex technical concepts for non-technical audiences through effective communication.
• Partner closely with Data Science, Machine Learning, and Analytics teams to provide data required for developing, operationalizing, and evaluating predictive models, dashboards, and reports.
• Manage vendors to understand the potential architectural impact of different vendor strategies and ensure alignment with the overall data platform architecture.
• Build and foster a high-performance engineering culture — mentoring and upskilling team members and providing the tools and motivation to make things happen.

What You'll Bring:

• 8+ years of experience in software development and deployment with business intelligence tools.
• 8+ years of experience in business intelligence and data warehousing, including mastery of SQL, Data Warehousing, and Big Data and stream processing.
• 2+ years of hands-on experience building or integrating AI/ML-powered features and agentic workflows into production applications.
• 1+ year of experience using AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Cline, Aider) to accelerate software delivery.
• 5+ years of experience analyzing large datasets to identify trends, patterns, and outliers to extract meaningful insights.
• 5+ years of experience writing design documentation, Source-to-Target mapping documentation, and managing Confluence pages.
• 5+ years of experience converting business functionalities into technical Jira stories.
• 3+ years of hands-on experience with SQL, Databricks, ADF, Datastage (or other ETL tools), SSAS Cubes, Cognos, Tableau, ThoughtSpot, and other BI tools.
• Hands-on experience designing and building agentic workflows using orchestration frameworks such as LangGraph, LangChain, CrewAI, AutoGen, or Amazon Bedrock Agents.
• Experience implementing RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) pipelines using vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector, Chroma) and frameworks (LlamaIndex, LangChain Retrieval).
• Working knowledge of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) for connecting AI models to enterprise data sources, tools, and APIs.
• Strong experience with data modeling, design patterns, and building highly scalable Business Intelligence solutions.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor and coach engineering talent, including upskilling teams on AI-augmented development practices.
• Excellent communication and storytelling skills, with the ability to clearly convey complex analytical results to business partners.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, Economics, Finance, or another quantitative field. #LI-SR1

What You’ll Get:

The annual base salary range for this position is $191,520.00 - $212,800.00 The actual base salary offered depends on a variety of factors, which may include, as applicable, the applicant’s qualifications for the position; years of relevant experience; specific and unique skills; level of education attained; certifications or other professional licenses held; other legitimate, non-discriminatory business factors specific to the position; and the geographic location in which the applicant lives and/or from which they will perform the job. Individuals employed in this position may also be eligible to earn bonuses. This job will be posted for a minimum of five days.

• Caring Community. You’ll collaborate with teammates who are equally passionate about innovating and driving the industry forward – together, united in beauty.

• Fulfilling Path. Your career transformation starts here, with opportunities that will challenge, stretch and develop your skills.

• Meaningful Work. As you make an impact on beauty, you’ll feel and see the positive change (consumer, industry, and social) that your individual voice is a part of.

Rewards as Unique as You:

Some benefits have eligibility requirements and may depend on job classification and length of employment.

• Health Choose a healthcare plan to fit you and your family’s needs with medical, dental, and vision coverage. Sephora also fully covers our employees’ disability and life insurance.

• Wealth We offer a competitive 401k with 4% match as well as FSA and HSA programs. We also offer a Student Debt Retirement plan, where your student loan payments qualify to earn the 401k match from Sephora.

• Balance You’ll be empowered to find the perfect blend of work/life balance that actually works for you with PTO, flexibility, protected leave, and more.

• Growth Career growth is built into every role, with access to training, development, and tuition reimbursement.

• Perks Think you’ve tried it all? Enjoy a 30% discount on all merchandise/services, opportunities for free product or “gratis,” and flash sale discounts on LVMH brand products.

• Support Join a team that truly cares – with free mental health and financial coaching resources with 24/7 access to Modern Health and Financial Finesse. Plus, volunteer and donation matching.

Sephora values a diverse and inclusive workplace and considers all applicants without regard to sex, pregnancy, race, color, national origin, gender (including gender identity and gender expression), age, religion, sexual orientation, military/veteran status, disability, or any other protected category. Sephora is committed to providing reasonable accommodation ta applicants with disabilities or other medical conditions. 

Sephora will consider all qualified applicants, including those with arrest and conviction records in a manner consistent with the requirements of all applicable laws, including the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, and the New York City Fair Chance Act. 

Join Us and Belong to Something Beautiful