Principal Software Engineer - Data

WEX; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 200,600 - 250,400; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Retirement savings plan

Tuition reimbursement

Job summary

WEX is seeking a Principal Staff Software Engineer to lead the Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) platform's architecture. In this role, you will drive data acquisition, semantic modeling, and product delivery, ensuring outcomes that support analytics and AI.

The successful candidate will have 12-15 years of experience in software engineering, a strong background in distributed systems, and the ability to collaborate across teams. Attractive benefits include health insurance and a competitive compensation plan.

Qualifications

• 12–15+ years of experience in software or platform engineering.
• Expertise in building and scaling large-scale data platforms.
• Strong background in data lifecycle management.

Responsibilities

• Architect the DaaS platform end-to-end.
• Establish platform standards for data processing.
• Drive innovation by incorporating modern data technologies.

Skills

Distributed systems

Data acquisition

Semantic modeling

Data lifecycle management

Leadership skills

Tools

Kafka

Spark

Airflow

DBT

Delta

Job description

Principal Staff Software Engineer – Data as a Service

About The Role

WEX is transforming into a data-driven enterprise through its modern Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) platform. At the core of this strategy is a need for world-class technical leadership—engineers who can see across domains, design foundational systems, and set the architectural direction for years to come.

As a Principal Staff Software Engineer, you will play a pivotal role in shaping WEX’s DaaS platform end-to-end. You will drive the unification of data acquisition, semantic modeling, and data products, ensuring they operate together as a coherent, scalable, and trusted foundation for analytics, AI, and customer-facing experiences.

This is not just a technical role—it is a platform architect and multiplier role, where you’ll be responsible for defining cross-cutting patterns, guiding teams across domains, and raising the technical bar across WEX’s data ecosystem. If you’re motivated by solving platform problems at global scale, influencing enterprise direction, and leaving behind systems that endure, this is your role.

What You’ll Do

• Architect the DaaS platform end-to-end: Define the next generation of WEX’s enterprise data stack spanning ingestion, semantic data modeling, metadata, and product delivery.
• Establish platform standards: Set reusable frameworks for ingestion, modeling, lineage, observability, and access control that accelerate adoption across domains.
• Guide technical strategy at scale: Partner with senior engineering, product, and business leaders to align data architecture with WEX’s strategic objectives. Solve for scale, reliability, and trust: Design systems that handle billions of records, guarantee semantic consistency, and deliver auditable, governed data assets. Mentor and multiply: Coach senior staff engineers and architects, instilling best practices in distributed systems, platform reliability, and semantic clarity.
• Drive innovation: Explore and incorporate modern open-source and cloud-native technologies (e.g., Spark, Iceberg, Kafka, Delta, DBT, Ray, ML-ready data services).
• Be the bridge: Collaborate across Data Acquisition, Semantic Modeling, Data Products, and Governance teams to ensure WEX’s data is trusted, consistent, and usable across every business domain.

What You Bring

• 12–15+ years of experience in software or platform engineering, with a proven track record of building and scaling large-scale data platforms. Expertise in distributed systems, data acquisition, and semantic modeling, with architectural ownership of systems processing tens of millions to billions of records per day.
• Demonstrated ability to set cross-domain architectural standards and influence adoption across multiple engineering teams.
• Strong background in data lifecycle management (versioning, auditability, observability, lineage, reproducibility).
• Deep experience with modern data ecosystems: streaming (Kafka, Flink), batch (Spark, DBT), storage (Iceberg, Delta), orchestration (Airflow, Dagster), and APIs.
• Exceptional communication and leadership skills—you can inspire engineers, influence executives, and build consensus across technical and business stakeholders.
• A passion for creating platforms that endure: trusted, consistent, and empowering for analytics, AI, and products enterprise-wide.

The base pay range represents the anticipated low and high end of the pay range for this position. Actual pay rates will vary and will be based on various factors, such as your qualifications, skills, competencies, and proficiency for the role. Base pay is one component of WEX's total compensation package. Most sales positions are eligible for commission under the terms of an applicable plan. Non-sales roles are typically eligible for a quarterly or annual bonus based on their role and applicable plan. WEX's comprehensive and market competitive benefits are designed to support your personal and professional well-being. Benefits include health, dental and vision insurances, retirement savings plan, paid time off, health savings account, flexible spending accounts, life insurance, disability insurance, tuition reimbursement, and more. For more information, check out the "About Us" section.

Pay Range: $200,600.00 - $250,400.00