Principal Data Engineer

Firmus; Singapore; On-site; SGD 180,000 - 270,000; Full time

Job summary

Firmus Technologies is seeking a Principal Data Engineer to own the data architecture across the company and set standards for engineers to build on as we scale our AI infrastructure. You will influence patterns across streaming telemetry, data lake, AI-native layers, and governance for secure, discoverable, and compliant data.

You will lead architecture decisions, RFCs, and mentor teams, while staying hands-on on complex problems and collaborating with AI, application, and enterprise customers

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or a related technical field.
• 10+ years in data engineering or data architecture with platform-level decision experience.
• Hands-on leader who previously owned architecture rather than contributed to it.
• Deep knowledge of end-to-end data architecture including ingestion, storage, transformation, and governance.
• Experience designing large-scale data platforms across regions/data centres.
• Production exposure to high-throughput time-series/telemetry pipelines.
• Experience with various storage patterns and cost-aware operation.
• Hands-on with event streaming (Apache Kafka) for high-throughput ingestion.
• Experience with both managed data platforms (Databricks, Snowflake) and self-hosted options (Spark, Trino, ClickHouse).
• Proficiency in Python and SQL, with Spark in distributed processing.

Responsibilities

• Own Firmus' data architecture, patterns, and technical standards for long-term scalability.
• Build and operate the real-time and AI data pipelines, storage, and semantic layers.
• Define data contracts, lineage, and access control across teams.
• Ensure governance, quality, and compliance (SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001) on the data platform.
• Lead architecture reviews, RFC processes, and mentoring across data teams.
• Collaborate with AI/application teams to support agent workflows and failure prediction.

Skills

Data Architecture

Platform Engineering

Python

SQL

Apache Spark

Kubernetes

Apache Kafka

Airflow

dbt

Delta Lake

Iceberg

Snowflake

Databricks

DDL/Data Modeling

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science or a related technical field

Tools

Databricks

Snowflake

Spark

Trino

ClickHouse

Delta Lake

Apache Iceberg

Job description

Firmus Technologies is a global leader pioneering the development and operation of efficient AI infrastructure across Asia Pacific.

Founded in Australia in 2019, our mission is to create the most efficient AI infrastructure by combining cutting‑edge technology with a steadfast commitment to sustainability.

At Firmus, we are unique in our approach. We design, build, and operate a new class of digital infrastructure – the AI Factory. Through our model‑to‑grid technology approach, we have pushed the boundaries of multi‑generational liquid cooling systems, energy management, AI software orchestration, and construction. For our customers, this approach allows us to make every watt count and deliver low‑cost AI tokens globally.

Firmus AI Cloud

Our large‑scale GPU cloud platform, Firmus AI Cloud, is purpose‑built to deliver energy‑efficient AI compute at scale to customers.

It empowers developers, enterprises, educational institutions, and government users to train and deploy AI models with unmatched efficiency and cost savings. With an ever‑growing suite of services and applications, we are committed to delivering a cloud experience that is market‑leading, proprietary, and built to scale.

ROLE

Firmus Technologies is seeking a Principal Data Engineer to join our Engineering and Technology team. You will own the data architecture across the company, setting the standards, patterns, and technology choices our engineers build on as we scale the platform. Your influence spans the full data stack: streaming telemetry off GPU compute and cooling systems, the data lake feeding hardware failure prediction models, the AI‑native layers powering agent‑based workflows, and the governance layer that keeps it all secure, discoverable, and compliant. You will be one of the most senior technical voices for data at Firmus: you make the architecture decisions the organisation lives with long‑term, and you stay hands‑on on the problems that are too complex or too consequential to delegate.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Data Architecture & Technology Strategy

Own the data architecture across Firmus: the patterns, technology choices, and technical standards that teams build on. Make the build‑versus‑buy, storage‑topology, and streaming‑versus‑batch decisions the organisation lives with long‑term and own the outcomes they lead to.

• Platform Build & Operations

Build the core of the data platform hands‑on: the real‑time and AI data pipelines, the storage layer, and the transformation and semantic layers that serve BI tooling, internal analytics, and customer‑facing reporting. Collaborate with the data engineers and platform engineers to deliver and operate streaming and batch ingestion from GPU telemetry, cooling sensors, billing, and incident sources, with clear reliability, schema‑evolution, and latency SLAs. Data components run as infrastructure‑as‑code on the self‑hosted, bare‑metal Kubernetes. You own their deployment, quality, and storage cost, and work with platform engineers on backup, recovery, and incident response.

• Governance, Quality & Compliance

Define and enforce data contracts, lineage, and access control across teams. Set organisation‑wide data quality and observability standards: schema contract enforcement, freshness SLAs, and anomaly detection. Extend Firmus' existing SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 controls to the data platform as it scales into new data centres and meet the regulatory requirements that apply to our enterprise and government customers.

• Technical Leadership

Raise the standard of data engineering in Firmus. Run design and architecture reviews, drive the RFC process, and catch architectural problems before they reach production. Mentor engineers on data architecture, data quality, and operational practice, building capability rather than a dependency on you.

Present architecture decisions and trade‑offs to the CTO and engineering leadership, direct about risks and clear about recommendations. Partner with the AI and application team so the architecture supports AI agent workflows and hardware failure prediction. Engage enterprise and government customers on architecture, lineage, or compliance when the conversation needs a senior technical voice.

SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or a related technical field.
• 10+ years in data engineering or data architecture, including at least 5 years making platform‑level decisions that other teams depended on. You are still hands‑on and intend to stay that way.
• You have been the most senior data engineer or architect in an organisation before, owning the architecture rather than contributing to it.
• Deep, hands‑on knowledge of end‑to‑end data architecture: ingestion, storage patterns, transformation, semantic layer design, observability, and governance.
• Track record designing large‑scale data platforms that integrate data across multiple regions or data centres.
• Production experience operating high‑cardinality time‑series and telemetry pipelines at high ingest and update rates.
• Production experience across columnar, time‑series, relational, object, and vector storage patterns. You know when to use each one and what it costs to operate .
• Hands‑on experience with event streaming platforms such as Apache Kafka for extremely high‑throughput, low‑latency ingestion.
• Hands‑on experience with both managed data platforms (such as Databricks or Snowflake) and their self‑hosted, open‑source equivalents (such as Spark, Trino, ClickHouse , and lake house table formats like Delta Lake or Apache Iceberg).
• Strong proficiency in Python and SQL, with distributed processing frameworks such as Apache Spark.
• Experience with pipeline orchestration and transformation tooling such as Airflow and dbt , with data quality testing built into standard pipeline development.
• Kubernetes experience covering Helm‑based deployments and operation of stateful data workloads on self‑hosted, bare‑metal infrastructure.
• Experience delivering data governance programmes against compliance frameworks such as SOC 2 Type 2 or ISO 27001, not just awareness of them.
• Experience running architectural reviews and setting engineering standards across teams.
• Willing to take part in the incident‑response on‑call rotation for the services your team owns.
• Willing to travel overseas occasionally when the role requires it.
• Clear and effective written and verbal communication in English. You can explain a complex architectural decision to a CTO or customer without losing the substance.

Preferred Experiences:

• Background in AI infrastructure, GPU cloud, or high‑performance compute, particularly working with infrastructure telemetry data at scale.
• Experience with industrial IoT and OT telemetry pipelines.
• Production experience with vector databases and embedding or retrieval pipelines for LLM and AI‑agent use cases such as failure prediction and incident response.

Employment Basis

Full‑time

Diversity

At Firmus, we are committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace. We encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds who are passionate about creating a more sustainable future through innovative engineering solutions.