Principal Data Engineer

univision; Miami (FL); On-site; USD 170,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

TelevisaUnivision is seeking a Principal Data Engineer to lead the data platform design and implementation for ViX’s high-volume pipelines. You will own end-to-end delivery, guiding real-time streaming and batch processing while shaping the platform’s multi-year technical direction.

You will mentor engineers, drive architectural decisions, and partner with product, data science, and analytics teams to ensure scalable, secure, and observable data workflows across cloud-native services.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of data engineering experience.
• Expert in streaming and distributed data systems.
• Experience with real-time and batch data pipelines.
• Ability to mentor junior engineers.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• Experience designing data platforms on cloud (GCP).

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and deploy the data platform architecture.
• Lead the design of real-time pipelines on Pub/Sub and Dataflow.
• Own pipelines end to end from design to production support.
• Mentor junior engineers and promote engineering best practices.
• Contribute to architectural decisions and platform strategy.
• Lead incident reviews and drive systemic improvements.

Skills

GCP data services

BigQuery

Pub/Sub

Dataflow (Apache Beam)

Cloud Composer

Cloud Storage

Python

SQL

dbt

Exactly-once processing

Real-time & batch pipelines

Architecture direction

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science/Engineering/Information Systems

Tools

Pulumi

Terraform

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 teamEvaluate 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