Principal Software Engineer - Semantic Data Platform & AI

WEX, Inc.; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 201,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

WEX, Inc. is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to help build the semantic foundation of its Data-as-a-Service platform. You will define architecture for semantic objects across domains and enable AI-ready data products.

The role combines hands‑on engineering with senior technical leadership across teams. You will mentor engineers, shape cross‑team data contracts, and ensure scalable, reliable distributed systems while advancing enterprise data governance and lineage.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, data engineering, distributed systems, data platforms, or related technology areas, with demonstrated experience operating at Staff, Principal, or equivalent technical scope.
• Deep software engineering and distributed systems expertise, with experience designing and building large-scale production platforms.
• Deep understanding of modern data architecture, including large-scale data processing, streaming, lakehouse architectures, data products, and distributed systems.
• Deep understanding of semantic data technologies and industry direction is essential. Direct experience building a semantic data layer is strongly recommended.
• Experience with semantic modeling, ontology, metadata platforms, knowledge graphs, data catalogs, enterprise data modeling, or closely related technologies.
• Demonstrated ability to translate complex business concepts into scalable technical abstractions and reusable platform capabilities.
• Strong understanding of data quality, governance, lineage, security, privacy, and operational reliability.
• Experience building platforms or capabilities adopted by multiple engineering teams, business domains, or product organizations.
• Strong architectural judgment and the ability to reason through complex tradeoffs while moving comfortably between architecture and detailed implementation.
• Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction and drive alignment across teams and organizational boundaries.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to engineers, product teams, business partners, and senior leaders.

Responsibilities

• Define and influence the architecture and technical direction for WEX's Semantic Data Lake and next generation of Data as a Service.
• Design and build semantic business objects that bring together enterprise data, business context, relationships, metrics, derived attributes, rules, lineage, quality, and governance.
• Develop scalable patterns and frameworks for creating semantic objects across multiple lines of business while maintaining consistent enterprise standards.
• Build core platform capabilities across semantic modeling, ontology, metadata, knowledge graphs, data quality, lineage, data contracts, and governance.
• Work deeply with business and product teams to translate complex business concepts into durable technical models and reusable platform capabilities.
• Help capture business context that may exist across databases, applications, workflows, documents, policies, and institutional knowledge.
• Enable AI and agentic applications to discover, understand, reason over, and safely act on trusted enterprise data.
• Design reusable APIs, services, frameworks, and developer experiences that allow teams to build data products and AI experiences faster.
• Solve complex distributed systems, data processing, scalability, reliability, and performance challenges.
• Establish engineering patterns and architectural standards and influence adoption across teams without relying on direct authority.
• Mentor engineers and provide technical guidance on complex architecture and implementation decisions.
• Remain hands‑on with architecture, design, prototyping, code, and critical platform components.

Skills

Distributed systems

Data engineering

Semantic data

Knowledge graphs

Data modeling

Architectural judgment

Communication skills

Tools

Spark

Flink

Kafka

Iceberg

Snowflake

Databricks

Graph databases

Job description

WEX, Inc. is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to help build the semantic foundation of its Data-as-a-Service platform. You will define architecture for semantic objects across domains and enable AI-ready data products.

The role combines hands‑on engineering with senior technical leadership across teams. You will mentor engineers, shape cross‑team data contracts, and ensure scalable, reliable distributed systems while advancing enterprise data governance and lineage.