Senior Data Engineer

Circle Internet Services Inc.; Toronto; On-site; CAD 133,000 - 166,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading data services company in Toronto is seeking a Staff Data Engineer to shape the future of their data platform. You will architect scalable systems and evaluate new technologies. The ideal candidate will have experience with Snowflake, understanding of distributed systems, and strong proficiency in Python and SQL. This role offers a competitive salary range of CAD $133,000 to $166,000 and values employee wellbeing through a comprehensive benefits package.

Benefits

Paid time off

Holistic mental health support

Comprehensive health benefits covering employees up to 100%

Qualifications

• Deep expertise with modern data warehouses including advanced optimization techniques.
• Production experience building high-volume data pipelines and ETL/ELT systems.
• Excellent written and verbal communication for technical and non-technical audiences.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical roadmap for the data platform.
• Design systems for terabyte-scale data processing.
• Conduct design reviews and provide architectural guidance for major initiatives.

Skills

Experience with modern data warehouses (Snowflake)

Knowledge in distributed systems

Proficiency in Python/SQL

Experience with ETL/ELT systems

Strong communication skills

Tools

Airflow

dbt

Kafka

Flink

Job description

We prioritize the health and wellbeing of our employees through our comprehensive benefit package, including generous paid time off to rest and recharge, holistic mental health support, and benefits covering employees up to 100%.

About the Role

We're looking for a Staff Data Engineer to shape the future of our data platform. You'll architect scalable systems, set technical direction, and build the frameworks that enable our data organization to operate at scale. This is a high-leverage role where your work multiplies the effectiveness of the entire team.

What You'll Do

Platform Architecture & Strategy

• Own the technical roadmap for our data platform, making architectural decisions that balance scalability, cost, and maintainability
• Evaluate and champion new technologies and tools, leading adoption across the organization
• Design systems for terabyte-scale data processing with a focus on performance and cost optimization
• Establish data engineering standards, patterns, and best practices that elevate team quality
• Model infrastructure costs and drive efficiency initiatives across Snowflake and cloud platforms

Advanced Technical Work

• Design and build scalable infrastructure for AI/ML workloads, including model training pipelines, feature engineering systems, and AI agent platforms
• Build reusable frameworks and internal platforms that abstract complexity for other engineers
• Design complex data models for critical business domains, balancing normalization, performance, and usability
• Architect real-time/streaming data infrastructure for low-latency use cases
• Engineer solutions for large-dataset performance challenges (Snowflake clustering, micro-partitioning, query optimization)
• Create sophisticated data-contract validators and schema evolution frameworks
• Develop profiling and drift detection systems that ensure data quality at scale

Technical Leadership

• Conduct design reviews and provide architectural guidance for major initiatives
• Lead incident response for critical data systems and drive blameless post-mortems
• Define SLAs and reliability standards for data products
• Mentor and upskill data engineers through pairing, code reviews, and technical discussions
• Lead cross-functional projects with analytics, data science, and product teams

Operational Excellence

• Build data observability platforms with intelligent alerting and monitoring
• Perform capacity planning and scalability analysis for the entire data stack
• Benchmark performance across infrastructure to identify optimization opportunities
• Design self-service tools that enable analytics engineers and analysts to work independently

What You Bring

Technical Depth

• Deep expertise with modern data warehouses (Snowflake strongly preferred) including advanced optimization techniques
• Strong foundations in distributed systems, data structures, and algorithms
• Production experience building high-volume data pipelines and ETL/ELT systems
• Proficiency in Python/SQL and orchestration tools (Airflow, dbt, or similar)
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS/GCP) and infrastructure-as-code

Strategic Thinking

• Track record of making architectural decisions with long-term impact
• Ability to evaluate tradeoffs between competing approaches
• Experience balancing technical excellence with business pragmatism
• Proven ability to drive technical strategy across an organization

Leadership & Communication

• History of mentoring engineers and raising team capabilities
• Excellent written and verbal communication for technical and non-technical audiences
• Ability to build consensus and influence without direct authority
• Experience leading projects across multiple teams

Bonus Points

• Experience with streaming systems (Kafka, Flink, etc.)
• Data mesh or domain-oriented architecture implementation
• Open source contributions or technical writing
• Background in analytics engineering or data modeling

You’ll Thrive Here If

• You think in systems and frameworks, not just individual solutions
• You're energized by making other engineers more effective
• You balance perfectionism with pragmatic delivery
• You're comfortable with ambiguity and defining your own projects
• You care deeply about code quality, documentation, and operational excellence

$133,000 — $166,000 CAD

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonableaccommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to performessential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.

About CircleCI

CircleCI is the world’s largest continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform, and the hub where code moves from idea to delivery. As one of the most-used DevOps tools - processing more than 3 million jobs a day - CircleCI has unique access to data on how the most effective engineering teams work, and the tools to help software companies successfully leverage the power of AI into their commercial applications. Companies like Hinge, HuggingFace, and Samsung use us to improve engineering team productivity, release better products, and get to market faster.

Founded in 2011 and headquartered in downtown San Francisco with a global, remote workforce, CircleCI is venture-backed by Base10, Greenspring Associates, Eleven Prime, IVP, Sapphire Ventures, Top Tier Capital Partners, Baseline Ventures, Threshold Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, Owl Rock Capital, Next Equity Partners, Heavybit, and Harrison Metal Capital.

CircleCI is an Equal Opportunity and affirmative action employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.