Senior Principal Engineer, Global Data Platforms

ForeFlight LLC; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 208,000 - 255,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision insurance with

Open PTO policy

401(k) with company matching and vest

12 weeks paid parental leave

2 days off to volunteer annually

Employee Assistance Program

Flight Training Stipend

Job summary

ForeFlight LLC is seeking a Principal Engineer, Global Data to lead technical strategy and execution for data platforms, pipelines, and governance. You will guide architecture, partner across engineering, product, security, and operations, and drive modernization of data systems in a high-impact aviation data environment.

The role emphasizes AI-forward thinking, deep systems expertise, and the ability to distill complex issues into clear priorities while mentoring teams and shaping the long-term

Qualifications

• 13+ years of software engineering, data engineering, platform engineering, or architecture.
• Experience operating as a senior technical leader across complex, distributed, data-intensive systems.
• Strong architecture judgment across data platforms, APIs, pipelines, cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, integration patterns, and operational tooling.
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional technical initiatives without relying solely on formal authority.
• AI-forward mindset with practical experience or strong fluency in applying AI to engineering, data quality, automation, analytics, knowledge workflows, developer productivity, or intelligent products.
• Strong ability to simplify complex technical issues into clear decisions and priorities for engineering teams.
• Strong understanding of data governance, data quality, data lineage, metadata, validation, and lifecycle management.
• Ability to work across legacy systems and modern cloud-native architectures.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; able to engage deeply with engineers and clearly across the organization.
• Builder mindset: willing to prototype, inspect systems directly, ask sharp questions, and turn ambiguity into forward motion.
• High judgment, low ego, and strong bias for practical outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive technical strategy across global data platforms, data production systems, data quality, data governance, and data delivery.
• Partner with Engineering, Product, Data Production, Architecture, Security, Operations, and Customer Success to align roadmap, architecture, and delivery.
• Lead technical reviews for major initiatives, ensuring solutions are scalable, resilient, secure, maintainable, and aligned with long-term platform direction.
• Identify opportunities to apply AI, automation, machine learning, intelligent QA, data validation, workflow orchestration, and developer productivity tools across the Global Data organization.
• Help modernize legacy systems, processes, and data pipelines while maintaining the reliability and trust required for aviation data.
• Establish technical standards, architecture patterns, engineering practices, and decision frameworks that improve quality and speed.
• Drive improvements in data quality, lineage, observability, reliability, validation, and operational excellence.
• Create clear technical narratives, decision documents, and tradeoff analyses for major initiatives.
• Mentor engineers, architects, and technical leads across the organization.

Skills

Software leadership

Distributed data systems

Data governance

AI-enabled data

Communication skills

Architecture judgment

Legacy to cloud

Strategic thinking

Developer productivity

Problem solving

Tools

Cloud platforms

Data pipelines

Observability tools

AI tooling

Job description

ForeFlight LLC is seeking a Principal Engineer, Global Data to lead technical strategy and execution for data platforms, pipelines, and governance. You will guide architecture, partner across engineering, product, security, and operations, and drive modernization of data systems in a high-impact aviation data environment.

The role emphasizes AI-forward thinking, deep systems expertise, and the ability to distill complex issues into clear priorities while mentoring teams and shaping the long-term