Principal Data Engineer

Univision; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

PTO

Tuition reimbursement

401(k)

Job summary

TelevisaUnivision is seeking a Principal Data Engineer to shape the architecture and long-term direction of ViX's data platform. You will stay hands-on with complex real-time and batch problems, mentor engineers, and drive multi-quarter platform delivery.

The role requires strong leadership, in-depth GCP expertise (BigQuery, Pub/Sub, Dataflow) and a track record building scalable data pipelines. Collaboration with cross-functional teams is essential and a focus on data quality and security.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience in Data Engineering, Data Warehousing, or Big Data environments.
• 2+ years in a Tech-lead role setting technical direction across teams.
• Demonstrated experience mentoring and developing junior and mid-level engineers.
• Proven track record designing and running real-time data platforms in production at high volume.
• Expert-level experience with GCP: BigQuery, Pub/Sub, Dataflow, Cloud Composer, and Cloud Storage; AWS experience considered.
• Expert-level Python and SQL, and production experience with dbt.

Responsibilities

• Build reference implementations, frameworks, and reusable libraries for ingestion templates, dbt and Airflow patterns, and Pulumi IaC modules.
• Lead design of real-time pipelines on Pub/Sub and Dataflow with event schemas, schema evolution, exactly-once processing, watermarking, late data handling.
• Own assigned pipelines end to end from design to deployment and production support.
• Ensure data quality, integrity, security, and availability across the data ecosystem.
• Mentor junior data engineers through technical guidance, code reviews, and knowledge sharing.
• Participate in technical interviews and help grow a high-performing data engineering team.

Skills

Python

SQL

Data engineering

Mentoring

Leadership

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in CS/Engineering/Info Systems

Tools

dbt

Pulumi

Terraform

Airflow

Kafka

Flink

Spark

BigQuery

Pub/Sub

Dataflow

Cloud Composer

Cloud Storage

Job description

ABOUT THE ROLE & TEAM:

At TelevisaUnivision, we are the world's leading Spanish-language media company, reaching millions of consumers across digital, streaming, social, audio, linear television, and live events. As we continue expanding our global streaming platform, ViX, we are investing heavily in technology, data, and innovation to deliver exceptional subscriber experiences and drive long-term business growth.

The Data Engineering team designs, builds, and operates the high-volume, high-velocity data pipelines that power ViX, including playback and engagement events, subscription data, advertising data, and the analytics data warehouse that turns them into business decisions. The team works closely with Engineering, Product, Data Science, and Analytics teams across TelevisaUnivision.

The Principal Data Engineer will play a key role as a technical leader in the design, development, and deployment of our data platform. You will be critical in setting the architecture and multi-year technical direction for our data platform, stay hands‑on with the hardest real‑time and batch data problems, and mentor junior and mid‑level engineers to raise the engineering bar across the team.

The ideal candidate pairs deep hands‑on expertise in streaming and distributed data systems with the judgment to make long-lived platform decisions, the influence to align teams without direct authority, and a genuine commitment to growing other engineers.

About You

You are a hands‑on technical leader who designs platforms, not just pipelines. You are equally comfortable writing production code, defending an architecture in a design review, pairing with a junior engineer on a tricky problem, and explaining trade‑offs to executives.

You bring:

• Expert‑level knowledge of Google Cloud Platform data services, especially BigQuery, Pub/Sub, Dataflow (Apache Beam), Cloud Composer, and Cloud Storage
• Deep experience designing real‑time and event‑driven architectures with exactly‑once semantics, late‑arriving data, and schema evolution
• Mastery of Python and SQL, and data transformation frameworks such as dbt
• A track record of setting technical direction for a platform used by many teams, and seeing it through multi‑quarter delivery
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools such as Pulumi or Terraform
• Excellent problem‑solving skills with the ability to design scalable and efficient solutions
• Strong attention to detail and the ability to manage multiple priorities effectively
• Outstanding communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to partner across technical and non‑technical teams
• A continuous improvement mindset and passion for mentoring and knowledge sharing
• A passion for mentoring junior engineers and building a strong engineering culture

Your Day-to-Day (Responsibilities)

Data Platform Architecture, Development & Technical Strategy

• Build reference implementations, frameworks, and reusable libraries that other engineers adopt, covering ingestion templates, dbt and Airflow patterns, and IaC modules in Pulumi
• Lead the design of real‑time pipelines on Pub/Sub and Dataflow, including event schemas, schema registry and evolution, exactly‑once processing, watermarking, and late‑data handling
• Own assigned pipelines end to end, from design and development through testing, deployment, and production support
• Ensure data quality, integrity, security, and availability across the data ecosystem

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with Product Managers, Data Scientists, Analysts, and Engineering teams to understand business requirements and translate them into technical solutions
• Contribute to data architecture discussions and long‑term platform strategy
• Collaborate with stakeholders to identify opportunities for process improvements and operational efficiencies

Performance & Optimization

• Optimize data storage, processing, and orchestration for performance, scalability, and cost efficiency, including BigQuery query and storage costs
• Monitor, troubleshoot, and resolve data pipeline and platform issues, and contribute to incident reviews
• Implement best practices for data governance, observability, testing, and CI/CD
• Lead incident response for severe data incidents, run blameless postmortems, and drive systemic fixes

Leadership & Team Contribution

• Mentor and support junior data engineers through technical guidance, code reviews, and knowledge sharing
• Contribute to architectural decisions and engineering best practices
• Participate in technical interviews and help grow a high‑performing data engineering team
• Evaluate and drive adoption of emerging technologies, including AI‑assisted engineering workflows and LLM‑enabled data tooling, while maintaining strong quality and security standards

You Have (Qualifications & Experience)

Required Experience & Skills

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical field, or equivalent experience
• 12+ years of experience in Data Engineering, Data Warehousing, or Big Data environments
• 2+ years in a Tech‑lead role setting technical direction across teams
• Demonstrated experience mentoring and developing junior and mid‑level engineers
• Proven track record designing and running real‑time data platforms in production at high volume, for example billions of events per day
• Expert‑level experience with GCP: BigQuery, Pub/Sub, Dataflow (Apache Beam), Cloud Composer (Airflow), and Cloud Storage; AWS experience will also be considered
• Expert‑level Python and SQL, and production experience with dbt
• Deep knowledge of stream processing concepts: event time vs. processing time, windowing, watermarks, exactly‑once delivery, and backpressure; Kafka, Flink, or Spark
• Expert understanding of data modeling for analytics, including dimensional modeling, event modeling, and lakehouse table formats such as Apache Iceberg
• Strong experience with Infrastructure as Code (Pulumi or Terraform), CI/CD, and automated testing for data pipelines
• Demonstrated ownership of data reliability: SLOs, data observability, incident management, and postmortems
• Demonstrated success reducing cloud data platform cost at scale
• Excellent written, verbal, and presentation skills, including design documents and communication with technical and executive audiences

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in subscription, streaming video (OTT), media, or sports organizations, including playback quality, engagement, and ad‑supported (AVOD) data
• Experience supporting ML and data science workloads: feature pipelines, real‑time features, recommendation and personalization data
• Experience with data contracts, schema registries, and data catalog or lineage tools

ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS

• Must be authorized to work in the United States
• Employment/education will be verified
• Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full‑time basis

Our Benefits

TelevisaUnivision believes that a happy, well‑balanced employee is what makes our culture thrive. We offer a wide selection of perks and benefits including PTO, tuition reimbursement, wellness and employee support programs, 401(k), and life and other insurance plans.

This is in addition to a comprehensive and competitive health benefits package featuring medical, dental, and vision coverage options.

TelevisaUnivision is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to characteristics protected by law.