Principal Data Engineer

Your Role and Impact
Your Contribution
About The Role--
As a Principal Software Engineer - Data, you will play a role as a hands-on technical leader and a key communicator with stakeholders as part of the Data Products team. You will contribute directly to the design and development of enterprise-grade data systems while also acting as a bridge between engineering teams and business partners.

Primarily Focused On

• Driving development efforts by contributing high-quality, scalable, and maintainable code across data pipelines, APIs, and platform components.
• Owning the communication of project deliverables, timelines, and risks to internal and external stakeholders, ensuring alignment at every step.
• Understanding customer needs and translating them into technical solutions, partnering closely with product, analytics, and engineering teams to deliver end-to-end value.
• Designing and delivering robust and future-proof data architectures that support analytics, APIs, and machine learning initiatives.
• Leading the technical execution of key projects, ensuring progress is clearly communicated and roadblocks are proactively addressed.
• Partnering cross-functionally to co-develop architectural roadmaps, implementation plans, and go-live strategies that meet business requirements.
• Participating in stakeholder reviews and providing clear, actionable updates on technical progress, dependencies, and constraints.
• Guide platform-level optimization, including cost efficiency, performance, reliability, and maintainability.
• Set best practices for data governance, lineage, quality, and security in a distributed data environment.
• Mentor engineers, fostering a strong technical culture and continuous learning environment.

Success In This Role Requires

• Proven ability to communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical audiences, including customers, executives, and cross-functional teams.
• Experience tracking and clearly reporting project progress, milestones, and blockers to internal stakeholders and external partners.
• Technical depth to personally contribute to codebases and architecture discussions, while helping set standards across teams.
• A proactive and collaborative mindset focused on transparency, stakeholder engagement, and shared ownership of outcomes.
• Commitment to quality, scalability, and maintainability of systems through thoughtful design and testing.

About You--
Experience & Technical Requirements:

• 8-12 years of development experience in data engineering, including direct contribution to 24x7 production systems.
• Advanced skills in Python and/or Golang, SQL, and current cloud data platforms (e.g., Databricks, BigQuery, Snowflake, or other).
• Strong experience in communicating complex project plans and deliverables to both technical and business audiences.
• Track record of developing and operating scalable data pipelines, APIs, and data platform components in real-world environments.
• Experience working directly with external stakeholders or customers, either in consulting, enterprise data delivery, or technical leadership roles.
• Deep understanding of batch and real-time data architectures, data modeling, and data warehousing.
• Hands-on experience with cloud-native ecosystems (GCP, AWS, or Azure), CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure as code.

• Experience with a broad range of cloud technologies, including:

• Containerization & deployment: Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud Run, Cloud Functions, GKE, ECS

• Data integration and orchestration: n8n, Cloud Scheduler, Airflow, Cloud Composer, Step Functions, dbt, Dataform
• Messaging: Kafka, Pub/Sub
• Analytics & BI: Looker, Tableau
• AI/ML: Vertex AI, SageMaker, MLflow

• Cloud storage integration: S3, GCS

• Proficiency in setting up data observability, quality frameworks, and governance controls in distributed systems.

• Strong ability to translate ambiguous business needs into scoped, deliverable projects.
• Demonstrated success in stakeholder engagement, influencing outcomes, and building long-term trust.
• Technical leadership in prior roles with clear individual contributions to architecture, development, and delivery.
• Mentoring experience and a passion for helping others grow technically and professionally.

Highly Favorable Skills

• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to articulate technical ideas and project updates clearly to both internal teams and customer stakeholders.
• Ability to distill complex data and architecture challenges into simple, actionable plans that align with stakeholder goals.
• Experience in client-facing roles, technical consulting, or enterprise delivery where direct communication with business or product partners was essential.
• A strong personal track record of hands-on coding and technical design, including ownership of critical systems and services.
• Demonstrated ability to build trust and alignment across teams, especially in fast-moving, high-stakes environments.
• Familiarity with cross-functional planning, scoping, and milestone delivery in agile or hybrid development environments.
• A commitment to mentoring and knowledge sharing, helping level up peers while continuing to grow as an individual contributor.