Senior Data Platform Engineer: End-to-End Pipelines & ML

Purple Wave Auction; Manhattan (KS); Remote; USD 100,000 - 125,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, Dental, Vision

401(k) match

Life Insurance

Short-Term Disability

PTO 3 weeks

ESPP

Phone stipend

Job summary

Purple Wave Auction is seeking a Senior Data Platform Engineer to design and operate data pipelines, ETL/ELT, and dbt models, exposing data via APIs and microservices for product teams. You will shape technical direction, mentor teammates, and drive standardization across the department.

The role involves building batch and streaming workflows, data quality, and observability, with hands-on Python coding; Go/TypeScript exposure is a plus.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in CS or 6+ years of software development in lieu of degree.
• 5+ years of backend software development experience.
• 2+ years of experience in technical leadership or mentoring roles.
• Programming Languages: Expert proficiency in Python; familiarity with Go and/or TypeScript/JavaScript is a plus.
• LLMs & Machine Learning: Experience integrating LLMs/ML into production systems (prompt engineering, embeddings, tool calling, evaluation).
• Databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis; familiarity with vector databases (pgvector, Pinecone, Weaviate).
• APIs: RESTful APIs at scale.
• CI/CD: Advanced pipeline design and implementation.
• Cloud: AWS, Azure, GCP; Kubernetes a plus.
• Strong communication and customer-focused mindset.
• Spanish-speaking candidates encouraged.
• Background check may be required.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to technical direction and strategic planning at the team level.
• Evaluate and recommend new technologies and approaches for backend and AI/ML evolution.
• Provide technical guidance and code reviews for team members.
• Provide technical guidance and support to product teams consuming backend services.
• Design, build, and maintain data pipelines and ETL/ELT workflows that ingest, move, and transform data across source systems, the warehouse, and downstream consumers.
• Develop and maintain dbt models, tests, and documentation to support analytics, reporting, and product features.
• Build and operate workflow orchestration for batch and streaming data (scheduling, dependency management, retries, and alerting).
• Establish and enforce data quality, reliability, and observability practices across pipelines.
• Implement schema management, versioning, and migration patterns to evolve data models safely.
• Optimize pipeline performance, cost, and scalability across the data platform.
• Design, develop, and maintain microservices in Python; familiarity with Go and/or TypeScript/JavaScript is a plus.
• Design and build APIs and services that integrate LLMs and ML models.
• Develop self-service tools and APIs for product teams to leverage backend and AI capabilities.
• Establish patterns for safely operating LLM/ML features in production (evaluation, observability, guardrails).
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation.
• Create and maintain technical documentation and standards repositories.

Skills

Python

Go

TypeScript

JavaScript

ETL/ELT

SQL

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

dbt

Kubernetes

Job description

Purple Wave Auction is seeking a Senior Data Platform Engineer to design and operate data pipelines, ETL/ELT, and dbt models, exposing data via APIs and microservices for product teams. You will shape technical direction, mentor teammates, and drive standardization across the department.

The role involves building batch and streaming workflows, data quality, and observability, with hands-on Python coding; Go/TypeScript exposure is a plus.