Lead Data Platform Engineer — Cloud-Native & Real-Time

Simple Machines; Sydney; On-site; AUD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Simple Machines is a global data engineering consultancy delivering modern data platforms and AI-driven software in Sydney, NZ, London, Poland and San Francisco. We design real-time pipelines and data products for clients who demand pragmatic engineering and measurable outcomes.

We are seeking a hands-on principal engineer who will shape platform architecture, lead technical direction, and mentor teams. You will work close to problems and clients to deliver high-impact data solutions.

Qualifications

• Proven experience building large-scale data platforms and real-time pipelines.
• Deep knowledge of modern data architectures (data mesh, contracts, data products).
• Strong programming in Python and SQL; solid data modelling skills.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end architecture of modern, cloud-native data platforms.
• Design scalable ecosystems with data mesh, data products and contracts.
• Make architectural decisions across ingestion, storage, processing and access layers.

Skills

Python

SQL

Spark

Data modelling

Architecture judgement

Tools

Databricks

Snowflake

AWS

GCP

Terraform

Pulumi

GitHub Actions

ArgoCD

dbt

Great Expectations

Soda

Airflow

Dataflow

Glue

Kafka

Flink

Kinesis

Pub/Sub

Job description

Simple Machines is a global data engineering consultancy delivering modern data platforms and AI-driven software in Sydney, NZ, London, Poland and San Francisco. We design real-time pipelines and data products for clients who demand pragmatic engineering and measurable outcomes.

We are seeking a hands-on principal engineer who will shape platform architecture, lead technical direction, and mentor teams. You will work close to problems and clients to deliver high-impact data solutions.