Business Intelligence Specialist (Looker)

 We are seeking a highly skilled Business Intelligence Specialist to take ownership of our Looker-based BI environment and broader analytics reporting. This role is responsible for developing and maintaining LookML models, dashboards, and Explores, while also providing strategic direction on data architecture, governance, security, and analytics best practices. The ideal candidate is highly proficient in Looker and brings experience across other BI platforms to support scalable, future-ready decision-making.

Looker Platform Ownership:
- Provide day-to-day support and maintenance for the Looker BI environment, ensuring platform reliability and performance.
- Develop and maintain LookML models, Explores, and dashboards based on business needs.
- Perform LookML updates, user administration, and performance optimization.
- Troubleshoot and resolve production issues during business hours.
- Build dashboards and reporting tables using BigQuery datamarts and datasets.

Strategic Advisory & Governance:
- Review and recommend improvements to data model architecture for scalability and performance.
- Provide guidance on Looker security, access control, and governance frameworks.
- Establish and maintain metric governance, including definitions, logic, and ownership.
- Support implementation of conversational analytics use cases within Looker.

Analytics Planning & Architecture:
- Evaluate existing dashboards and recommend improvements, redesigns, or decommissioning.
- Define dashboard user stories, including audience, purpose, decisions supported, and cadence.
- Contribute to BI-agnostic architecture planning for flexibility and scalability.
- Ensure dashboards rely on a governed semantic layer rather than embedded transformations.

Reporting & Documentation:
- Deliver weekly status reports covering completed tasks, hours, and upcoming deliverables.
- Maintain comprehensive documentation for LookML models, dashboards, and governance updates.
- Provide advisory reports with insights and recommendations on data architecture, security, and governance.

Required Qualifications:
- 3+ years of hands-on experience with Looker, including LookML, Explores, and dashboards.
- Strong knowledge of data modeling, including star schema, snowflake, and denormalized models.
- Experience with Looker security and access control, including roles, model sets, and user attributes.
- Advanced SQL skills for analytical querying.
- Experience with cloud data warehouses, such as BigQuery or Redshift.
- Solid understanding of BI governance and best practices.

Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience with other BI tools, such as Tableau, Power BI, Sigma, or Metabase.
- Familiarity with dbt or similar data transformation tools.
- Exposure to conversational analytics or natural language querying.
- Experience in franchise, retail, or multi-location environments.
- Familiarity with Git-based version control for LookML.
- Understanding of Customer Lifetime Value modeling.