Data Engineer Contract Jobs in Bozeman, MT (NOW HIRING)

onX is seeking a Software Development Manager to lead the Content Data Platform team -- the engineering team responsible for the data infrastructure that puts accurate, current, and complete content on onX's maps. You'll lead a cross-functional team of data engineers and geospatial analysts who own the full map content data lifecycle: ingesting authoritative data from hundreds of sources, conflating multi-source inputs into a canonical truth with per-fact provenance, and delivering consistent outputs to every downstream consumer. This is a high-impact role at the center of onX's content strategy, operating within the Content Engineering organization and reporting to the Director of Engineering.

(Essential Job Duties)

• Make great engineers better. You'll support your teammates with individual goal-setting, professional development, and mentoring. You'll coach engineers through structured growth plans and partner with senior/staff-level ICs to set technical direction for the team.
• Deliver the platform. Collaborating with the Data Engineering team, you'll drive delivery of the Content Foundation roadmap: extending our unified data ingestion platform to all content types, proving fact-level provenance on land ownership data at a national scale, and establishing versioned data contracts with downstream consumers.
• Build great teams. You'll work closely with your peers to hire smart, creative, and kind engineers. You'll be responsible for building and sustaining a healthy team culture where ownership and collaboration are the norm. You'll mentor across disciplinary lines: geospatial domain experts are your partners, and you'll raise the bar on data quality craft and engineering best practices across that boundary, not just within your direct team.
• Drive cross-team convergence. You'll partner with the Data & Analytics EM to converge on shared Lakehouse infrastructure, a shared metadata and lineage platform, a unified analytics infrastructure, and consistent environment patterns across teams.
• Own operational excellence. You'll establish and maintain production reliability practices, including SLO definition, monitoring, and alerting, incident management, on-call sustainability, and postmortem culture for a platform that directly affects the accuracy of maps used by millions of hunters, anglers, and outdoor enthusiasts.
• Embed quality as a platform constraint. You'll drive a shift-left approach to data quality: schema contracts enforced at ingestion, registration with metadata store, automated validation gates before data reaches downstream consumers, and SLOs tied to data freshness and completeness, not just platform uptime. You hold the bar for data quality and governance high and don't let it slip under delivery pressure.
• Translate and communicate. You'll translate business strategy and content team priorities into clear engineering direction, helping your team understand why their work matters. You'll articulate the value of platform investments to stakeholders who care about outcomes like fresher trail data or more accurate land ownership boundaries -- not pipeline architecture. You're effective in a matrixed environment where your ability to influence without authority matters as much as your ability to execute
• Collaborate. You'll serve as the engineering interface for vertical product teams (Hunt, Offroad, Fish, Backcountry), data delivery, and the geospatial editing team. You'll manage dependencies, push back on one-off pipeline requests in favor of durable platform capabilities, and maintain high cross-functional alignment.

onX has created a thriving distributed workforce community across several US locations. This position can be performed from an onX corporate office, "Basecamp," or "Connection Hub." 

• Corporate Offices: onX was founded in Montana with offices in Missoula and Bozeman. If you prefer to work in an office at least part of the time this is a great option.
• Basecamps: Basecamps are established virtual workforce communities where a sizable number of distributed team members group for work, volunteering, socializing, and adventure.  
  • Our current Basecamps are located within a 90-mile radius of the following: Austin, TX; Charlotte, NC; Denver, CO; Kalispell, MT; Minneapolis, MN; Portland, OR; Salt Lake City, UT; and Seattle, WA. 
• Connection Hubs: Connection Hub locations are smaller, emerging communities of distributed team members. 
  • Our current Connection Hubs are located within a 60-mile radius of the following: Boise, ID; Charleston, SC; Dallas/Fort Worth, TX; Phoenix, AZ; Richmond, VA; Spokane, WA; and Vermont.

• At least five (5) years of experience directly managing software engineers.
• Proven experience leading teams building data platform or data infrastructure systems -- not just BI or analytics, but the pipelines, storage layers, and operational systems that produce data other teams depend on.
• Experience leading a team through migration off a legacy system to modern infrastructure, including sequencing work without breaking production and maintaining velocity across the transition.
• Proven track record of breaking down large, long-horizon projects into milestones that deliver incremental business value -- you don't let platform work disappear into a multi-year black box.
• You've managed or closely partnered with cross-functional teams that aren't organized along traditional engineering/analytics lines, and you know how to build systems that serve domain experts as primary operators.
• You have strong hiring and team development instincts. You know how to identify and recruit strong data engineers, how to evaluate domain-specific expertise, and how to develop engineers into modern data platform patterns.
• You can engage substantively on architectural decisions and are comfortable challenging existing assumptions -- ELT patterns, schema evolution, change data capture, data contracts, compute engine trade-offs -- and help your team resolve open questions rather than escalate them.
• You communicate well with executives and non-technical stakeholders, and can build organizational buy-in for long-horizon infrastructure investments while pushing the team for incremental delivery.
• You're comfortable using AI-assisted tools to improve engineering productivity and can help your team adopt them effectively.
• A shared passion for and ability to demonstrate onX's Company Values.
• Permanent US work authorization is a condition of employment with onX.
• Ability to travel for multiple days to a corporate office or other onX strategic location, such as a Basecamp.

Though not required, we would be thrilled to consider candidates with any of the following:

• Experience with the GCP data stack: Managed Spark  BigQuery, BigLake, Pub/Sub, Managed Airflow.
• Familiarity with Apache Iceberg, Spark/PySpark, DuckDB, dbt, and Airflow.
• Exposure to geospatial data processing (GDAL, PostGIS, Apache Sedona, DuckDB spatial extensions).
• Familiarity with Knowledge Graph architectures or graph data models.
• Experience managing teams in an outdoor, mapping, or location technology context.
• You have a B.S. or M.S. in computer science, data engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.

onX is committed to compensating all employees fairly and equitably for their contributions. For this position, applicants can expect to make between $150,000 to $188,000 upon hire. The pay range will vary based on experience, skills, certifications, and education among other factors as required in the job description. In addition, full-time onX employees are eligible for a grant of common share options with a vesting schedule and a potential annual bonus of 10% based on company performance.

• Competitive salaries, annual bonuses, equity, and opportunities for growth
• Comprehensive health benefits including a no-monthly-cost medical plan 
• Parental leave plan of 5 or 13 weeks fully paid
• 401k matching at 100% for the first 3% you save and 50% from 3-5%
• Company-wide outdoor adventures and amazing outdoor industry perks
• Annual "Get Out, Get Active" funds to fuel your active lifestyle in and outside of the gym
• Flexible time away package that includes PTO, STO, VTO, quiet weeks, and floating holidays

In this role, success is driven by cognitive abilities such as concentration and problem-solving, essential for our computer-centric tasks. onX will explore reasonable accommodations to ensure that individuals with diverse abilities can fully engage in and contribute to the essential physical and mental functions of the job. If you need assistance or accommodation, please contact us at PS@onxmaps.com. 

Position open until filled. 

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