Senior Data Platform Architect & AI

Unchain Data; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 232,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Startup environment

Professional development

In-office collaboration

Bi-weekly company meetings

Wellness reimbursement

Vacation policy

Parental leave

Job summary

Ripple is seeking a Senior Staff Engineer to serve as the technical architect and strategic leader for Ripple's data platform. You will build a coherent, unified view of Ripple's data across all business units and establish the definitive source of truth for company metrics.

You will guide AI-driven data transformations and collaborate with senior leaders to shape the data strategy. The role combines architecture, governance, and applied AI, with mentorship across data teams and cross-functional

Qualifications

• 14+ years of data engineering, architecture, or related software engineering with senior leadership experience.
• Experience integrating data ecosystems across multiple business units to create a unified data platform.
• Deep expertise in modern data architecture, data mesh, and lakehouse patterns.
• Hands-on with Spark, Kafka, Airflow, dbt, Databricks, and cloud-native data services (AWS, GCP, Azure).
• Experience with metrics governance, semantic layers, and truth sources.
• AI/ML in data engineering contexts, including feature stores or AI-assisted data ops.
• Ability to whiteboard a multi-year platform strategy and code prototype components.
• Excellent communication and ability to influence VP/C-level audiences.
• Collaborative leadership style; ego-free and influential.
• BS or equivalent in CS.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical architecture for Ripple's data platform and AI roadmap.
• Create One View of Ripple data across units and a single source of truth.
• Define governance, ownership models, and a metrics glossary.
• Lead AI roadmap and AI Agents for self-serve analytics.
• Automate data workflows with AI-assisted SQL/ETL generation.
• Lead cross-team design reviews and establish architectural standards.
• Mentor engineers and raise coding quality and rigor.
• Advise senior leadership on platform investments and build-vs-buy decisions.
• Collaborate with Data, Product, Engineering, and GTM to align data strategy.

Skills

Data engineering

Data architecture

Senior leadership

Architect roles

Spark

Kafka

Airflow

dbt

Databricks

Cloud services

Metrics governance

Semantic layers

AI/ML in data engineering

LLMs in developer workflows

Communication

Education

BS in Computer Science or equivalent

Tools

Spark

Kafka

Airflow

dbt

Databricks

AWS

GCP

Azure

Job description

Ripple is seeking a Senior Staff Engineer to serve as the technical architect and strategic leader for Ripple's data platform. You will build a coherent, unified view of Ripple's data across all business units and establish the definitive source of truth for company metrics.

You will guide AI-driven data transformations and collaborate with senior leaders to shape the data strategy. The role combines architecture, governance, and applied AI, with mentorship across data teams and cross-functional