Principal Data Platform Engineer

Harnham; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 230,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Vision insurance

401(k)

Pension plan

Job summary

A high-growth tech company based in San Francisco is seeking a Principal Data Platform Engineer to lead the development of a modern, scalable data platform. In this role, you will tackle large data challenges and enable AI/ML capabilities, working with cutting-edge technologies like Kafka and Snowflake. The ideal candidate has over 8 years of data engineering experience and a history of leading platform architecture initiatives. Competitive salary and remote options are offered.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in data engineering or platform architecture.
• 5+ years at the Principal Engineer level or equivalent.
• Deep expertise with Kafka (and its ecosystem), streaming data systems.

Responsibilities

• Design and build a next-gen data platform to power product and internal use cases.
• Architect for batch + streaming, scalability, fault tolerance, and low latency.
• Lead data modeling, warehousing, governance, and ingestion best practices.

Skills

Data engineering

Platform architecture

Kafka expertise

Cloud-native architecture

Collaboration skills

Leadership

Tools

Kafka

ClickHouse

Iceberg

Snowflake

Job description

San Francisco, CA (Remote Eligible – US Only)

$230K–$280K base + equity

Are you ready to lead the design and build of a world-class data platform from the ground up?

A high-growth, product-led tech company is looking for a Principal Data Platform Engineer to lead the buildout of a modern, scalable data platform from the ground up. If you’re excited about solving massive data challenges and shaping the infrastructure that supports real-time analytics and AI/ML at scale, this role is for you.

As the most senior technical IC on the Data Platform team, you'll partner with leadership across Engineering, Product, Security, and Compliance to design a low-latency, cloud-native data architecture using best-in-class tools like Kafka, Iceberg, ClickHouse, Tinybird, and Snowflake.

Why this role?

• Join a growing Data Platform team
• Own the technical vision and architecture end-to-end
• Tackle petabyte-scale data challenges and real-time streaming use cases
• Work with a cutting-edge tech stack (Kafka, Iceberg, ClickHouse, Snowflake, etc.)
• Drive platform evolution to support AI/ML and company-wide analytics

What You’ll Do

• Design and build a next-gen data platform to power product and internal use cases
• Architect for batch + streaming, scalability, fault tolerance, and low latency
• Lead data modeling, warehousing, governance, and ingestion best practices
• Champion engineering excellence and mentor senior engineers
• Align technical decisions with long-term business strategy
• Optimize for performance, cost, and resiliency in a modern cloud environment

What We’re Looking For

• 8+ years of experience in data engineering or platform architecture
• 5+ years at the Principal Engineer level or equivalent
• Deep expertise with Kafka (and its ecosystem), streaming data systems
• Strong experience with ClickHouse, Iceberg, Snowflake, or similar tools
• Cloud-native architecture expertise (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
• Track record of designing data systems for compliance and governance
• Experience scaling systems to support petabyte-level workloads
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and leadership skills
• Bonus: Experience enabling AI/ML platforms or preparing for IPO-scale growth

Benefits

• Medical insurance
• Vision insurance
• 401(k)
• Pension plan