BI Lead

Position Title: BI Lead / Platform Architect (Fabric Lakehouse + Power BI)

Location: Remote (IST-friendly)

Engagement: 12-week contract (extendable to Phase-2)

Timings: IST-friendly, may require occasional extended hours for go-live support

Team Setup: Works with UX/UI, Frontend, and Backend teams; leads Data/BI/ML stream for the reporting module

Role Purpose

We are seeking an experienced BI Lead / Platform Architect to own the end-to-end analytics platform. You will design and deliver a scalable solution starting from Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse to Gold Star Schema to Certified Power BI Semantic Model, ensuring robust security, governance, performance, and CI/CD automation. The role requires strong hands-on expertise in Microsoft Fabric, Power BI Premium, Direct Lake, Hybrid Tables, Aggregations, and DevOps automation.

You will be responsible for delivering the Phase-1 MVP reporting pack and establishing best practices that will serve as the foundation for enterprise-scale adoption.

Key Responsibilities

Architecture and Modeling

• Design Bronze, Silver, and Gold layers in OneLake (Delta) and define conformed HR entities with modeling conventions.
• Build certified Power BI datasets using Direct Lake, Hybrid Tables, and Aggregations.
• Implement calculation groups (Time, Currency, Scenario), field parameters, and perspectives (Executive, HR, Manager).
• Lead the Gold layer development including FactWorkerSnapshot, FactReqPipeline, FactHire, FactPayrollLine, FactTimeEntry, FactAbsence with SCD2 dimensions.

Security, Governance and Operations

• Implement Row-Level Security (RLS) and Object-Level Security (OLS) with salary masking and region/business unit segregation.
• Apply sensitivity labels, DLP policies, and export governance (watermarking, row caps).
• Establish CI/CD pipelines using XMLA, TMSL, Tabular Editor, ALM Toolkit, and Deployment Pipelines (Dev to Test to Prod).
• Define and monitor telemetry and SLOs such as P95 visual render less than 5 seconds and dataset refresh within 60 minutes.

Delivery and Leadership

• Deliver the MVP report pack across Operational, Analytical, Executive, and Discovery dashboards, plus a Paginated (printable) pack.
• Guide and mentor Data Engineers, Analytics Engineers, and ML Engineers.
• Conduct performance reviews, code reviews, and go-live quality gates.
• Collaborate with UX/UI and Frontend teams to securely embed analytics in Power Pages or Power Apps and enable Power Automate workflows.

Must-Have Qualifications

• 8 to 12+ years of experience in BI/Analytics with at least 3 years hands-on in Power BI Premium or Fabric at enterprise scale.

• Proven expertise with:

• Direct Lake, Hybrid Tables, Aggregation Tables

• VertiPaq tuning, DAX Studio, Tabular Editor

• XMLA/TMSL scripting, ALM Toolkit, Deployment Pipelines

• Experience designing star schemas with SCD2 dimensions.

• Strong track record in RLS/OLS implementations, sensitivity labeling, and DLP policies.
• Hands-on ownership of CI/CD for semantic models and BI performance optimization.

Nice-to-Have Skills

• Dataflows Gen2 and Fabric Lakehouse/Warehouse internals.
• HR analytics domain experience (workforce, talent, compensation).
• Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions for BI CI/CD.
• Fabric notebooks (Python, Spark).
• Advanced Paginated Reports development.

What You Will Deliver in 90 Days

• Certified Power BI dataset with Direct Lake, Aggregations, and RLS/OLS.
• Delivery of 6 to 7 reports across Operational, Analytical, and Executive layers plus a Paginated pack.
• A Discovery dashboard with anomaly detection cards and AI-generated narratives.
• Full documentation including modeling standards, KPI dictionary, security runbook, CI/CD pipeline, and telemetry dashboards.

Interview Process (Suggested)

1. Architecture Deep-Dive (45 min): Lakehouse to Direct Lake design for 150M+ rows, aggregation strategy, hybrid cutover.
2. Hands-On (4560 min): Tabular Editor exercise (Calculation Group + Field Parameter), aggregation mapping, DAX Studio performance review.
3. Security and CI/CD (30 min): Walkthrough of RLS/OLS, DLP setup, XMLA/TMSL deployment.
4. Portfolio Review (30 min): Prior projects in large-scale Power BI models and paginated packs.