Senior Data Reliability Engineer AWS

Empower LLC; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 106,000 - 149,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical Insurance

Dental Insurance

Vision Insurance

401(k) Matching

Tuition Reimbursement

Paid Time Off

Volunteer Time

Job summary

Empower LLC is seeking a Senior Data Reliability Engineer to ensure the reliability, stability, and performance of an AWS-based data platform. You will troubleshoot production data systems, resolve incidents, and collaborate with engineering teams to meet critical SLAs and improve operational practices.

The role requires a strong data engineering foundation with hands-on experience building and supporting data pipelines, diagnosing real-world data failures, and implementing improvements to

Qualifications

• 5+ years of hands-on experience building, operating, or supporting production data platforms in AWS.
• Hands-on experience designing, building, deploying, and operating production-grade data pipelines.
• Experience with real-world failures and operational challenges in production data environments.

Responsibilities

• Own production data pipeline and platform reliability, resolving failures, latency, and data quality issues.
• Troubleshoot distributed data-processing workloads across Spark/EMR and data warehouses like Redshift or Snowflake.
• Lead or support incident response, perform root cause analysis, and implement lasting fixes.

Skills

AWS

Python

SQL

Data Pipelines

Spark/EMR

Data Reliability

Incident Response

Tools

Redshift

Snowflake

EMR

S3

Glue

DynamoDB

Lambda

Job description

Our vision for the future is based on the idea that transforming financial lives starts by giving our people the freedom to transform their own. We have a flexible work environment, and fluid career paths. We not only encourage but celebrate internal mobility. We also recognize the importance of purpose, well-being, and work-life balance. Within Empower and our communities, we work hard to create a welcoming and inclusive environment, and our associates dedicate thousands of hours to volunteering for causes that matter most to them.

Chart your own path and grow your career while helping more customers achieve financial freedom. Empower Yourself.

***Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa at this time, including CPT/OPT.***

We are seeking a hands‑on Senior Data Reliability Engineer to ensure the reliability, stability, and performance of our AWS-based data platform. You will troubleshoot production data systems, resolve incidents, and partner with engineering teams to meet business‑critical SLAs and continuously improve operational practices.

This role requires a strong Data Engineering foundation combined with production reliability experience. The ideal candidate has personally built data pipelines, supported them in production, diagnosed real‑world data and processing failures, and implemented improvements to prevent recurrence.

What You Will Do:

• Own production data pipeline and platform reliability, resolving failures, delays, data quality issues, and performance problems.
• Troubleshoot distributed data‑processing workloads across Spark/EMR, ingestion pipelines, and data warehouses such as Redshift and Snowflake.
• Lead or support incident response, perform root cause analysis, restore data safely, and implement lasting fixes.
• Define and monitor data SLAs for freshness, latency, and completeness and improve monitoring, alerting, and observability.
• Diagnose data issues including late‑arriving data, incomplete loads, duplicate data, schema changes, and reconciliation failures.
• Perform safe backfills, reprocessing, and production data recovery while preventing duplicate or inconsistent data.
• Develop automation and tooling using Python and SQL to reduce operational toil, improve troubleshooting, and increase platform resilience.
• Identify and address data-platform performance and cost issues.
• Partner with Data Engineering teams to improve pipeline design, data quality, reliability, and production readiness.
• Support disaster recovery, backup validation, and recovery workflows.
• Create and maintain runbooks, SOPs, and operational documentation.
• Participate in an on‑call rotation for production data systems.

What You Will Bring:

• 5+ years of hands‑on experience building, operating, or supporting production data platforms, with significant recent experience in AWS environments.
• Hands‑on experience designing, building, deploying, and operating production‑grade data pipelines.
• Prior experience building data pipelines and seeing them through production, including exposure to real‑world failures and operational challenges.
• Strong hands‑on Python and SQL experience in production data environments.
• Hands‑on experience troubleshooting distributed data‑processing systems such as Spark/EMR.
• Experience working with AWS data services such as EMR, S3, Glue, Redshift, DynamoDB, Lambda, or similar data services.
• Experience operating or troubleshooting cloud data warehouses such as Redshift, Snowflake, or similar platforms.
• Strong understanding of end‑to‑end production data architecture, including ingestion, processing, orchestration, storage/warehousing, data quality, monitoring, and downstream consumption.
• Experience handling production incidents and performing root cause analysis.
• Experience with data validation, reconciliation, backfills, reprocessing, and late or incomplete data.
• Strong problem‑solving skills and the ability to work through ambiguous production data issues.
• Strong communication during incidents with both technical and non‑technical stakeholders.

What Will Set You Apart:

• Experience troubleshooting complex Spark/EMR production workloads.
• Experience improving observability and alerting specifically for data pipelines and data platforms.
• Experience with streaming or event‑driven data systems such as Kafka, Kinesis, or CDC patterns.
• Experience with Snowflake performance, workload, reliability, or cost optimization.
• Experience designing automated controls for data freshness, completeness, reconciliation, and anomaly detection.
• Experience with disaster recovery, backup validation, and resiliency testing for data platforms.
• Experience developing automation or intelligent tooling to improve data‑platform reliability, troubleshooting, performance, or cost efficiency.

Work Conditions and Interview Expectations:

• Participate in an on‑call rotation for production data systems, with occasional change windows outside normal business hours to support safe releases and resiliency activities.
• This job operates in a professional office environment.
• Candidates should be prepared to discuss and demonstrate the projects, technologies, architecture decisions, and production experience represented on their résumé. Technical assessments are intended to evaluate the candidate's individual hands‑on experience and must be completed independently.
• Final candidates may be subject to identity, employment, education, certification, reference, and background verification in accordance with company policy and applicable law

What we offer you

We offer an array of diverse and inclusive benefits regardless of where you are in your career. We believe that providing our employees with the means to lead healthy balanced lives results in the best possible work performance.

• Medical, dental, vision and life insurance
• Retirement savings – 401(k) plan with generous company matching contributions (up to 6%), financial advisory services, potential company discretionary contribution, and a broad investment lineup
• Tuition reimbursement up to $5,250/year
• Business‑casual environment that includes the option to wear jeans
• Generous paid time off upon hire – including a paid time off program plus ten paid company holidays and three floating holidays each calendar year
• Paid volunteer time — 16 hours per calendar year
• Leave of absence programs – including paid parental leave, paid short‑ and long‑term disability, and Family and Medical Leave (FMLA)
• Business Resource Groups (BRGs) – BRGs facilitate inclusion and collaboration across our business internally and throughout the communities where we live, work and play. BRGs are open to all.

Base Salary Range

$105,700.00 - $149,275.00

The salary range above shows the typical minimum to maximum base salary range for this position in the location listed. Non‑sales positions have the opportunity to participate in a bonus program. Sales positions are eligible for sales incentives, and in some instances a bonus plan, whereby total compensation may far exceed base salary depending on individual performance. Actual compensation offered may vary from posted hiring range based upon geographic location, work experience, education, licensure requirements and/or skill level and will be finalized at the time of offer.

Equal opportunity employer Drug-free workplace

We are an equal opportunity employer with a commitment to diversity. All individuals, regardless of personal characteristics, are encouraged to apply. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age (40 and over), race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, pregnancy, religion, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, genetic information, or any other status protected by applicable state or local law.

***For remote and hybrid positions you will be required to provide reliable high‑speed internet with a wired connection as well as a place in your home to work with limited disruption. You must have reliable connectivity from an internet service provider that is fiber, cable or DSL internet. Other necessary computer equipment, will be provided. You may be required to work in the office if you do not have an adequate home work environment and the required internet connection.***