Senior Principal Data Engineer – News Analytics Platform

Yahoo Holdings Inc.; Champaign (IL); On-site; USD 150,380 - 327,025; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare

401(k) match

Education stipends

Backup childcare

Discretionary annual bonuses

Job summary

Yahoo Holdings Inc. is seeking a Senior Principal Data Engineer in Champaign, Illinois. This role involves designing and implementing our analytics stack, ensuring high standards in data pipelines, and optimizing cloud performance. The ideal candidate should have over 10 years of experience in data engineering with expertise in SQL and cloud technologies.

This position offers a competitive salary of $150,380 to $327,025 annually along with comprehensive benefits, including healthcare and education stipends.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software/data engineering experience, focusing on system design.
• Expertise in architecting large-scale analytics or data platforms.
• Hands-on experience with event/analytics data and experimentation platforms.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture of the analytics stack’s modeling and orchestration layers.
• Design and build tested data pipelines with established standards.
• Drive migration of business logic into maintainable pipelines.

Skills

Software/data engineering experience

System design

Data architecture

Technical leadership

Deep expertise in SQL

Cloud data warehouses (BigQuery)

Python for pipeline tooling

AI-assisted development workflows

Education

BS or MS in Computer Science or related major

Job description

Job Overview

Yahoo News is rebuilding how we turn raw user data into trusted insight, consolidating our event data in the cloud and standardizing how we transform, model, and serve analytics across the organization. We are looking for a Senior Principal Data Engineer to design and implement our data analytics stack end to end: setting the architectural direction, building foundational pipelines, and establishing patterns for the team to build on for years.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture of the analytics stack’s modeling and orchestration layers, setting technical direction for how raw and intermediate data become trusted, consumer‑ready data products.
• Design and build well‑tested data pipelines and establish the standards, patterns, and tooling the broader team will adopt.
• Establish standards and governance for integrating AI‑assisted engineering tools (e.g., Claude Code, Codex, Cursor) within our data engineering practices to accelerate development cycles while maintaining strict code quality, security, and schema validation.
• Translate ambiguous business questions into durable, version‑controlled data models that scale to multi‑year horizons and tens of millions of daily users.
• Partner with and influence the central data team, analysts, product managers, and leadership to define the metrics, dimensions, and data contracts the business depends on, and to deliver data products that meet their needs.
• Drive the migration of business logic out of dashboards into maintainable, version‑controlled pipelines, eliminating inconsistency and sprawl.
• Build datasets that support experimentation and growth analysis as the platform matures.
• Optimize the cloud data warehouse for performance and cost at scale.

About You

• BS or MS in Computer Science or a related major, or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years of software/data engineering experience, with a strong emphasis on system design, data architecture, and technical leadership.
• Demonstrated experience architecting and delivering large‑scale analytics or data platforms end to end, and setting technical direction adopted by others.
• Deep expertise in SQL and modern data transformation and modeling practices, with a track record of establishing standards and patterns at scale.
• Extensive hands‑on experience with cloud data warehouses (BigQuery or equivalent) and pipeline orchestration in production.
• Proven ability to operate across the full analytics stack, from raw data ingestion through modeling to reporting, making sound architecture and tooling decisions that hold up over time.
• Deep, hands‑on experience with event/analytics data (e.g., GA4) and experimentation platforms, including how experiment assignment and exposure data flow into analytics.
• Proficiency in Python for pipeline tooling and automation.
• Experience with advanced AI‑assisted development workflows (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, etc.) is highly desirable.

Benefits & Compensation

The compensation for this position ranges from $150,380.00 to $327,025.00 per year, depending on location, skills, and experience. The compensation package may also include incentive compensation opportunities such as discretionary annual bonuses. Comprehensive benefits include healthcare, a 401(k) match, backup childcare, education stipends, and more.

Equal Opportunity Statement

Yahoo is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to, and will not be discriminated against based on age, race, gender, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, disability, or any other protected category. Yahoo will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable law. Yahoo is dedicated to providing an accessible environment for all candidates during the application process and for employees during their employment. If you need accessibility assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability, please submit a request via the Accommodation Request Form or call +1.866.772.3182.