Senior Semantic Layer Development Specialist

Job Title: Senior Semantic Layer Development Specialist

Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)

Employment Type: Full-Time

Work Arrangement: 100% Remote — Work From Home

Level: Senior

About the Role

We are seeking an experienced Senior Semantic Layer Development Specialist to design, develop, and maintain enterprise semantic layers that provide consistent, governed, and accessible business data for analytics and reporting. The role focuses on translating complex data structures into reusable business-friendly models, standardizing metrics and definitions, and enabling reliable self-service analytics across the organization.

This fully remote position requires strong expertise in semantic modeling, business intelligence architecture, data warehousing, metric definitions, and analytical data governance. The specialist will collaborate with data engineers, enterprise architects, business analysts, and reporting teams to ensure that users can access trusted data through consistent business logic and optimized analytical models.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain enterprise semantic layers that translate underlying data structures into business-oriented analytical models.
• Define reusable business entities, dimensions, measures, attributes, hierarchies, and relationships across subject areas.
• Establish standardized business metrics, key performance indicators, calculation rules, and aggregation logic.
• Translate business reporting requirements into scalable semantic models and governed analytical structures.
• Develop and maintain semantic models across platforms such as Microsoft Power BI, Microsoft Fabric, Tableau, Looker, or comparable technologies.
• Establish consistent definitions for measures and dimensions to reduce discrepancies between reports and business departments.
• Collaborate with dimensional modelers and data engineers to align semantic structures with enterprise data warehouse architecture.
• Design logical relationships between fact tables, dimensions, calculated measures, and analytical datasets.
• Implement appropriate security controls, including row-level and object-level security, in coordination with authorized security teams.
• Optimize semantic model performance through appropriate relationship design, aggregation strategies, query reduction, and calculation optimization.
• Review complex calculations, including DAX, LookML, SQL-based metrics, or equivalent semantic modeling expressions.
• Develop reusable datasets, governed data models, and certified analytical assets for business users.
• Maintain semantic layer documentation, metric catalogs, data dictionaries, and business definition registers.
• Establish version control, development standards, testing procedures, and deployment documentation for semantic models.
• Conduct model validation and reconciliation to ensure that reported metrics align with approved business definitions and source data.
• Investigate inconsistencies in calculations, filters, relationships, aggregation behavior, and reporting outputs.
• Support self-service analytics initiatives by providing reusable models and clear guidance for report developers and business stakeholders.
• Coordinate with data governance teams to maintain metadata quality, ownership definitions, lineage information, and approved business terminology.
• Assess the impact of source data changes on semantic models and downstream dashboards, reports, and analytical applications.
• Recommend improvements to semantic architecture, metric governance, model reusability, and enterprise reporting consistency.
• Provide technical guidance and mentoring to BI developers, data analysts, and semantic model developers.

Qualifications and Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Engineering, Business Analytics, or a related discipline.
• Significant professional experience in semantic modeling, business intelligence development, analytics engineering, or data architecture.
• Strong understanding of semantic layer concepts, including business entities, measures, dimensions, relationships, hierarchies, and aggregation behavior.
• Practical experience developing enterprise semantic models using Power BI, Microsoft Fabric, Looker, Tableau, or comparable platforms.
• Advanced knowledge of DAX, LookML, SQL, or other relevant semantic modeling and calculation languages.
• Strong understanding of dimensional modeling, star schemas, snowflake schemas, fact tables, and conformed dimensions.
• Experience defining and governing business metrics, KPIs, calculation logic, and standardized reporting definitions.
• Knowledge of row-level security, object-level security, access permissions, and controlled data exposure.
• Experience optimizing semantic model performance, query execution, relationships, and analytical calculations.
• Familiarity with cloud data warehouses such as Snowflake, Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, Azure Synapse, or equivalent platforms.
• Understanding of data lineage, metadata management, data quality controls, and enterprise data governance.
• Experience with version control, model deployment, testing, and documentation practices.
• Ability to interpret business requirements and translate them into reusable technical models.
• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management abilities.
• Ability to work independently and coordinate effectively with geographically distributed teams.

What We Offer

• 100% remote working arrangement within the stated UAE employment framework.
• Opportunity to shape enterprise analytics architecture and standardized business intelligence capabilities.
• Exposure to modern semantic modeling platforms, cloud data warehouses, and advanced analytical technologies.
• Collaborative environment with opportunities for technical leadership and professional development.
• Competitive compensation based on experience, qualifications, and technical expertise.

How to Apply

Interested candidates should submit an updated CV highlighting their semantic layer development experience, BI platform expertise, metric governance work, and enterprise analytics projects.

Application subject line: Application – Senior Semantic Layer Development Specialist (UAE Remote)

Candidates should confirm applicable employment arrangements, residency requirements, and work authorization before accepting an offer.

• Role boundary: This position focuses on remote semantic architecture, model development, analytical logic, documentation, and technical recommendations. Physical server, storage, and network infrastructure maintenance must be performed by qualified local personnel. Production deployments, privileged database or platform access, sensitive data disclosures, changes to access permissions, and modifications affecting financial or regulatory reporting must follow approved change-control procedures and be executed or authorized by appropriately designated personnel.