Company Information

Better World Books (“BWB” or the “Company”) is a for-profit socially conscious business and a global online bookseller that collects and sells new and used books online matching each purchase with a book donation. Each sale generates funds for literacy and education initiatives in the UK, U.S., and around the world. Since its launch in 2003, Better World Books has raised over $35 million for libraries and literacy, has sold over 100 million books, has donated over 38 million books, and has reused or recycled more than 475 million books.

Senior Data Engineer & Analyst

Job Summary

As part of the Business Analytics team, the Senior Data Engineer & Analyst will operate at the intersection of data engineering, analytics, and applied machine learning. This role will help move several key machine learning initiatives from development into production while building the data infrastructure that supports Better World Books’ next phase of growth. Key priorities include productionizing inventory acceptance models, advancing dynamic pricing capabilities, and building data pipelines that support growth initiatives. This is a senior individual contributor role with significant ownership. You will work closely with the Vice President of Business Analytics to design, build, and deploy systems that directly influence business decisions. Success in this role requires strong technical depth across the data stack, comfort working in ambiguous environments, and the judgment to effectively use AI coding tools while maintaining rigorous engineering standards.

Essential Functions

Machine Learning and Advanced Analytics

Shepherd the inventory acceptance model from testing into production, including monitoring, evaluation, and ongoing iteration.
Accelerate development of the dynamic pricing model, incorporating historical pricing decisions, sell-through data, and external competitive signals.
Integrate vector embeddings of book metadata to support similarity-based predictions for titles with limited sales history.
Design model monitoring, evaluation, and guardrail frameworks to ensure production ML systems remain reliable and explainable.
Partner with the analytics team on architecture, feature engineering, and model development decisions.
Apply statistical and machine learning methods across the business, including anomaly detection, refund risk scoring, and experimentation design.

Data Engineering and Infrastructure

Build and maintain data pipelines supporting pricing, inventory, marketing attribution, and operational reporting.
Develop ETL/ELT workflows that unify data from internal systems and third-party sources.
Own the data infrastructure supporting key initiatives.
Evaluate and integrate external data sources.
Partner with IT to implement experimentation infrastructure for pricing and on-site testing.
Support expansion of the Power BI reporting environment across financial, operational, and logistics reporting.
Promote strong practices in data quality, governance, and monitoring.

Analytics and Business Partnership

Deliver analysis that informs key business decisions including marketplace pricing strategy, multi-book discount optimization, customer LTV, acquisition cost by channel, and wholesale profitability.
Partner with the VP of Business Analytics to identify automation opportunities that deliver measurable operational impact.
Contribute to cross-team AI knowledge-sharing sessions to help the organization adopt AI tools effectively.
Work with IT and Operations to ensure analytics systems are scalable, well-documented, and performant.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

Advanced SQL skills required; extensive experience with Microsoft SQL Server strongly preferred.
Strong Python development skills for data engineering, automation, and ML workflows.
Experience working with machine learning frameworks such as scikit-learn, PyTorch, XGBoost, GBDT, or similar.
Familiarity with the full ML lifecycle: training, evaluation, deployment, and monitoring.
Experience building and maintaining data pipelines and ETL/ELT workflows (e.g., dbt, SSIS, Airflow, Prefect, or similar).
Solid understanding of data warehousing, dimensional modeling, and database performance optimization.
Familiarity with Power BI or similar BI tools.
Exposure to cloud platforms (e.g., Azure, AWS, Snowflake) and DevOps practices (e.g., Git, CI/CD) is a plus.
Active user of AI coding assistants (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or equivalent).
Equally important: the technical depth to recognize when AI-generated code or model output is incorrect, incomplete, or brittle—and the discipline not to ship it anyway.
Experience with vector databases or embedding-based systems is a plus.
Strong communication skills and the ability to translate technical work into business insights are essential.

Qualifications, Training, and Experience

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information systems, engineering, mathematics, statistics, or a related field required. Master’s degree preferred.
Five or more (5+) years of professional experience in data engineering, analytics engineering, or a closely related role with increasing scope and ownership.
Demonstrated experience building and maintaining production ML systems—not just model training, but deployment, monitoring, and iteration.
Experience in e-commerce, retail, or marketplace environments preferred.
Relevant certifications (e.g., Microsoft Data Engineering, dbt, cloud platforms) are a plus.
Strong alignment with the Purpose & Pillars of BWB.

Reports to: VP, Business Analytics

Location: Mishawaka, IN (hybrid eligible in some instances)

Type: Hourly, Non-Exempt, Full-Time

*BWB reserves the right to update and amend the terms in this Job Summary at its sole discretion and at any time.

Learn more about this Employer on their Career Site

Senior Data Engineer and Analyst