---
title: 'Senior Analytics Engineer at Passage'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-analytics-engineer-passage-toronto-30tb82f8adh7'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-05'
---

# Senior Analytics Engineer at Passage

- **Company:** Passage
- **Location:** Toronto, Canada
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-08-06
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-05
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/passage/d218da41-3446-4cbb-aa52-6e8f310d2127

## Job description

## ABOUT PASSAGE

Passage helps international students navigate their journey abroad — from choosing a program and getting admitted to financing their studies and helping with their visa.

## THE ROLE

You'll own Passage's data platform end to end. Not a greenfield project and not a legacy mess: a working, documented warehouse that the company already runs on — executive KPIs, marketing attribution, funnel analytics, and internal ops tools are all powered by it today. Your job is to take ownership, keep it trustworthy, and extend it as the business grows.

This is a high-leverage, high-trust seat. The models you build define how the company measures itself, and your stakeholders are leadership, marketing, and operations — not a ticket queue.

## WHAT YOU'LL DO

- Model the business in dbt on BigQuery. Own a ~100-model project (staging → intermediate → marts) built on Kimball dimensional modeling: SCD Type 2 dimensions, fact tables with explicit grain, and aggregate tables for reporting. Recent work includes applicant milestone tracking, loan-process stage modeling, and ad-click-level attribution.
- Own metrics people rely on. Executive KPIs, conversion funnels, cohort analytics, and marketing attribution across Google Ads, Meta Ads, and UTM/click-ID data.
- Run the pipelines. Airflow 3 orchestration with Slack alerting, data-quality tests, freshness monitoring, and backfills. Ingestion is CDC from our production Postgres via Debezium + Kafka Connect on GKE (with Airbyte and Fivetran alongside).
- Serve the data. A dedicated dbt serving layer exposed through Hasura GraphQL powers internal ops tools in the product itself; Metabase serves dashboards and self-serve queries.
- Turn messy operational reality into tables people trust. Much of the work is business-logic modeling: screening outcomes, payment and fee states, deferral lineage, guarantor chains. You'll dig into the source system, talk to the people who run the process, and encode the truth.
- Keep quality and cost in check. dbt tests, per-model documentation, BigQuery partitioning/clustering, and bytes-scanned discipline.
- Document for humans and AI. Every model is documented, and the docs auto-sync to a companion repo built so both teammates and AI agents can query the warehouse correctly. We work AI-assisted, with coding standards written into the repos.

## OUR STACK

BigQuery · dbt · Airflow 3 · Debezium + Kafka Connect (GKE) · Airbyte · Fivetran · Hasura · Metabase · PostgreSQL (Django app) · Docker · GCP · AI-assisted development

YOU MIGHT BE A GREAT FIT IF YOU

- Have 4+ years building analytics or data platforms, with expert-level SQL.
- Have run dbt in production and have real dimensional-modeling instincts — you think in grain, and SCD Type 2 doesn't scare you.
- Have operated an orchestrator (Airflow or similar) and are comfortable in Python.
- Enjoy ambiguous business-logic modeling: reverse-engineering a production schema, interviewing stakeholders, and shipping a table that settles the debate.
- Write documentation people actually use.
- Can own a platform solo: prioritize, communicate, and ship without a spec.

## NICE TO HAVE

- CDC pipelines (Debezium, Airbyte) or Kafka Connect; Kubernetes/Helm exposure.
- BigQuery performance and cost tuning.
- Hasura/GraphQL, reverse ETL, or embedding warehouse data into product surfaces.
- Metabase or Looker administration.
- Experience as an early or solo data hire at a startup.
- Fluency with AI-assisted development workflows.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE IN THE FIRST SIX MONTHS

- You run the platform day to day — pipelines, tests, and monitoring — and stakeholders don't feel a handoff.
- You've shipped new marts or metrics for at least two teams, from stakeholder conversation to documented, tested tables.
- Data quality and freshness are visibly better: fewer surprises, faster answers.

Ready to join us?

We are building a company designed to expand access to life-changing opportunities around the world.

If you are excited about building systems, solving complex problems, and shaping how a company makes decisions, we would love to meet you.

Note: Artificial intelligence may be used in the screening or assessment of applicants.

If your experience does not match every requirement but you believe you can thrive in this role, we encourage you to apply.

## Compensation

C$100K to C$150K + Offers Equity

## About Passage

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Passage is a Talent Success Platform that matches international students with PGWP-eligible Canadian programs aligned with labour-market shortages, finances tuition and living costs, and supports students through graduation and employment.
- **Entity Type**: Private (funding stage not disclosed)
- **Headquarters**: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- **Founded**: 2023
- **Founders**: Martin Basiri (CEO), Saif Iqbal (CTO) [ca.linkedin.com](https://ca.linkedin.com/company/passagehq)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Education technology and student finance
- **Target customers**: International students from 100+ countries seeking Canadian education and post-graduation work pathways; Canadian public colleges and universities (DLIs)
- **Mission**: "A public commitment to change one million lives by the start of 2030" [passage.com](https://www.passage.com/)

## Products & Services
- **Match**: AI-guided intake platform that routes international talent into Canadian programs aligned with verified Government of Canada labour shortages, screened for PGWP eligibility [passage.com](https://www.passage.com/)
- **Finance**: Loans up to C$65,000 at 11.95% fixed APR for tuition and first-year living costs, underwritten using program, profile, and outcome signals rather than traditional credit history [passage.com](https://www.passage.com/)
- **Stay**: End-to-end support from pre-arrival study-permit guidance through on-the-ground academic and settlement help, job search, and PGWP-eligible placement [passage.com](https://www.passage.com/)
- **Afghan Program**: A dedicated initiative launched in 2024 to fund and admit up to 100 Afghan women through Canadian university and college programs [passage.com](https://www.passage.com/)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly available
- **Key Metric**: Total funding not disclosed; team size of ~16 employees (as of early 2026) [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/passage-passagecom)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not listed in available sources
- **Growth Signals**: Launched in 2023 with first cohorts arriving in 2024; active hiring across operations, finance, and engineering globally; expansion into onshore and offshore pathways for students from Africa, Asia, Middle East, and Latin America [passage.com](https://www.passage.com/)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Integrated model**: Combines matching, financing, and post-graduation support in one platform – unlike loan-only or recruitment-only alternatives.
- **Alternative underwriting**: Uses education and outcome signals instead of cross-border credit history, enabling financing for students traditionally priced out.
- **Labour-market alignment**: Programs selected based on verified Canadian shortages, increasing employability and PGWP success.
- **AI-driven consistency**: Policy enforcement, document validation, and audit trails ensure every applicant receives the same care [passage.com](https://www.passage.com/).

## Strategic Focus
- Scale the platform to serve more international talent and expand the network of Canadian partner institutions.
- Grow the lending book while maintaining low default rates via outcome-linked financial model.
- Build technology infrastructure (data platform, engineering) to support automated intake and policy application.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-driven**: Direct, measurable impact on access to education and career opportunities for underserved international talent.
- **Small, ambitious team**: 16 employees in Toronto with a flat structure; roles in product, operations, finance, and law [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/passage-passagecom).
- **Work policy**: Hybrid/on-site at Toronto HQ for most roles; some remote positions available for global acquisition coordinators and growth leads in specific regions [passage.com](https://www.passage.com/).
- **Open roles**: Currently hiring for Business Operations Associate, Credit Strategy Analyst, Director of Data, Principal/Senior/Staff Software Engineer, Staff Analytics Engineer, and global growth/acquisition roles [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/passage-passagecom/jobs).
- **Engineering culture**: Emphasis on using AI to automate repetitive tasks so the team focuses on human-centric support; modern stack with data-driven decision-making.

## Sources
1. [passage.com](https://www.passage.com/)
2. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/passage-passagecom)
3. [ca.linkedin.com](https://ca.linkedin.com/company/passagehq)

## Other roles at Passage

- [Senior Marketing Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-marketing-engineer-passage-toronto-c1xjtwedtdpx) — Toronto, Canada
- [Global Growth Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/global-growth-lead-passage-india-pkf2abavmkw2) — India
- [Senior Accountant / Finance Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-accountant-finance-manager-passage-passage-hq-7as3n1v5dc33) — Passage HQ
- [Director of Finance](https://feeny.ai/job/director-of-finance-passage-passage-hq-n7mg1fdt7196) — Passage HQ
- [Principal Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/principal-software-engineer-passage-passage-hq-h7ywwarrefd0) — Passage HQ
- [Staff Analytics Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-analytics-engineer-passage-passage-hq-8gdmbfyccxvb) — Passage HQ
- [Director of Data](https://feeny.ai/job/director-of-data-passage-passage-hq-apdmc8ym2w47) — Passage HQ
- [Senior Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-passage-passage-hq-wj2v9pmg2cp4) — Passage HQ
- [Global Acquisition Coordinator](https://feeny.ai/job/global-acquisition-coordinator-passage-india-3tm3gt5fe30b) — India
- [Global Acquisition Coordinator](https://feeny.ai/job/global-acquisition-coordinator-passage-nigeria-sm4mdx5df6bj) — Nigeria