Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Cars Commerce builds technology solutions that simplify automotive commerce for dealerships, manufacturers, and consumers. The BI Analyst - Semantic Layer will serve as a Semantic Layer Engineer, authoring and maintaining governed metric, dimension, hierarchy, and glossary definitions as code. The role also partners with business and data engineering stakeholders to manage metric governance, improve data literacy, establish canonical taxonomies, and drive adoption of trusted data.
Responsibilities
- Author and maintain semantic layer definitions, hands-on. Write and maintain the actual metric, dimension, and hierarchy definitions as code (SQL/YAML or the modeling language of whichever semantic layer tool is adopted) — not specifications for someone else to build
- Run the metric definition lifecycle. Own the end-to-end process — request, draft, review, certification, publication, versioned change control, and deprecation — for every governed metric, working directly with business stakeholders as co-authors of what the metric means
- Own the Atlan glossary content. Maintain business definitions, context, and ownership tagging for glossary terms (content ownership; platform administration of Atlan itself sits with the Analytics Engineer on Data Engineering)
- Keep definitions in sync across tools. Audit and reconcile drift so that a given metric or term means the same thing in the semantic layer, in the enterprise reporting tool, and in the Atlan glossary — and enforce the rule that a metric is not “real” until it's certified in one place and referenced everywhere else
- Partner directly with business teams. Work with department heads and analysts across the business to define new metrics, resolve disagreements about what a metric means, and keep existing definitions current as the business changes
- Drive data literacy. Run office hours, onboarding sessions, and enablement content so that using governed, certified data is the easy default rather than an extra step people route around
- Own taxonomy definition content. Define canonical hierarchy and rollup logic for high-fragmentation categorical data (e.g., product/vehicle attributes), in partnership with the engineering and product teams who own execution
- Publish the governance and adoption scorecard. Report on governed-metric coverage of query volume, duplication retired, certified-vs-uncertified usage trends, and open definitional disputes
Skills
- Remote and must be located in the Chicago area. May require onsite interviews
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
- 5+ years of experience in analytics engineering, business intelligence, or data governance, with genuine hands-on SQL experience — this is not a policy-only or cataloging-only role
- Direct, hands-on experience authoring and maintaining models in a semantic layer or metrics layer tool — dbt Semantic Layer/MetricFlow, LookML (Looker), Cube, Omni, AtScale, or comparable. You must be comfortable working in the actual model code, not just writing specifications
- Strong dimensional modeling fundamentals — star schema design, slowly changing dimensions, and an understanding of how join fan-out silently corrupts aggregate results
- Experience running a metric or glossary governance process with real business stakeholders outside the data team — not just internal data-team documentation
- Experience with a data catalog tool for glossary and business-term content management — Atlan, Collibra, Alation, or similar
- Excellent stakeholder management, facilitation, and training/enablement skills — comfortable adjudicating disagreements between business stakeholders and running literacy programs for non-technical audiences
- For US-based Positions: Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States. Please note that we are unable to sponsor employment visas at this time
- Experience with Tableau or another enterprise BI tool as a content/definition owner, not just an administrator
- Experience building canonical taxonomies or classification systems from messy or inconsistent source data
- Experience partnering directly with marketing, sales, or product stakeholders on cross-departmental KPI alignment
- Experience building a data governance or semantic layer program from zero to one, rather than only maintaining an existing mature program
Benefits
- Bonus and/or equity programs for eligible roles, depending on level and role
- Medical, Dental & Vision Healthcare Plans
- New Hire Stipend for Home Office Set-Up
- Generous PTO
- Paid Holidays, Floating Holiday, Volunteer Day, Recharge Day
- Remote work
Company Overview