Senior Software Engineer, Data Platform

Chime Financial, Inc; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 187,000 - 259,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Office in-office policy

Health benefits

Generous vacation

Parental leave

Job summary

Chime Financial, Inc is seeking multiple senior Data Platform Engineers to own and shape our data infrastructure. You will design and operate self-serve ETL/ELT frameworks for batch and streaming workloads, ensuring reliability and governance across teams.

You will drive the data platform roadmap, collaborate with Product Engineering, Data Science, Analytics, and Marketing, and implement data contracts and ingestion at scale.

Qualifications

• 5+ years building, shipping, and operating data infrastructure in production.
• Strong system design skills with documented trade-offs.
• Proficiency in Python or Java/Kotlin with emphasis on testing and maintainability.
• Experience with modern data stack: cloud warehouse, orchestration, and IaC.
• Ability to operate in regulated fintech data governance environments.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate self-serve ETL/ELT frameworks for batch and streaming workloads, owning reliability, data quality SLAs, and schema evolution.
• Drive the data platform roadmap, evaluate build-vs-buy, define integration patterns, and establish cross-team standards.
• Partner with Product Engineering, Data Science, Analytics, and Marketing as a technical lead to design data contracts and scale ingestion while ensuring governance.
• Architect and enforce data lineage, schema registry, and access controls across domains to meet fintech regulatory requirements.
• Own the platform—monitor, alert, debug, and resolve incidents with infrastructure-level urgency.
• Mentor junior/mid-level engineers and elevate coding and design reviews across the team.
• Engineers participate in on-call rotations; on-call duties may fall outside regular hours.

Skills

Data infrastructure design

System design

Data quality & governance

Python/Java/Kotlin

Cloud data warehouses

Airflow/Dagster/Prefect

Terraform

Kafka/Flink/Kinesis

dbt

Observability

Tools

Snowflake

BigQuery

Redshift

Airflow

Dagster

Prefect

Terraform

Kafka

Flink

Kinesis

dbt

Job description

About the Role

Chime’s Data Platform team builds the infrastructure every engineering and analytics team depends on - ingestion, transformation, quality, governance, and self-serve tooling across batch and streaming workloads.

You’ll own core platform systems at scale, design the frameworks other teams build on, and set the technical standards for how data moves through Chime. High autonomy, real architectural trade-offs, production impact from day one. We’re hiring multiple engineers into this role at the senior level.

In this role, you can expect to

• Design, build, and operate self-serve ETL/ELT frameworks supporting both batch and streaming workloads, with direct ownership of pipeline reliability, data quality SLAs, and schema evolution
• Drive the technical roadmap for our data platform - evaluate build-vs-buy decisions, define integration patterns, and set standards that engineering teams across the company adopt
• Partner with Product Engineering, Data Science, Analytics, and Marketing as a technical lead to design data contracts, onboard new data domains, and scale ingestion without sacrificing governance
• Architect and enforce data lineage, schema registry, and access controls across all domains - ensuring compliance with fintech regulatory requirements (SOX, PII handling)
• Own the platform - monitor, alert, debug, and resolve incidents across the data platform with the urgency expected of infrastructure that powers financial products
• Raise the technical bar of the team through code review, design reviews, and hands‑on mentorship of junior and mid‑level engineers
• Engineers are required to participate in on‑call rotation. Being on call may include responding to incidents outside of regular working hours when necessary.

To thrive in this role, you have

• 5+ years building, shipping, and operating data infrastructure in production - not just writing pipelines, but owning their reliability, performance, and cost at scale
• Strong system design skills - you’ve written design docs, made trade-offs, and delivered the result
• Solid understanding of key metrics for data pipelines and experience building solutions to provide visibility to partner teams
• Deep proficiency in Python or Java/Kotlin, with strong opinions on testing, code quality, and maintainability in data-heavy codebases
• Production experience with the modern data stack, specifically:
• A cloud data warehouse (Snowflake, BigQuery, or Redshift)
• Workflow orchestration (Airflow, Dagster, or Prefect) and IaC (Terraform)
• At least one streaming technology (Kafka, Flink, or Kinesis) - you understand when batch isn’t enough
• Data modeling and transformation frameworks (dbt)
• Built or improved observability for data systems - freshness monitoring, row‑level quality checks, schema drift detection, and SLA dashboards that engineering and business teams actually trust
• Experience operating in a regulated environment (fintech, healthtech, or similar) where data governance, access control, and audit trails are non‑negotiable

#LI-Onsite #LI-DA1

Below is the base salary offered for this role and level of experience. Full‑time employees may also be eligible for bonus(es), competitive equity, and benefits. For commissioned roles, the base salary listed in this job description does not include incentive/variable pay. The actual base salary offered may be higher, depending on your location, skills, qualifications, and experience.

Wage Notice

$187,000 — $259,000 USD

A little about us

At Chime, we believe that everyone can achieve financial progress. We created Chime—a financial technology company, not a bank—on the premise that core banking services should be helpful, easy, and free. Through our user‑friendly tools and intuitive platforms, we empower our members to take control of their finances and work towards their goals. Whether it's starting a savings account, purchasing a first car or home, launching a business, or pursuing higher education, we're proud to have helped millions unlock their financial potential.

We're a team of problem solvers, dreamers, and builders with one shared obsession: our members. From day one, Chimers have worked tirelessly to out‑hustle and out‑execute competitors to bring our mission to life. Their grit and determination inspire us to work harder every day to deliver the very best experience possible. We each bring an owner's mindset to our work, refusing to be outdone and holding ourselves accountable to meet and exceed the highest bars for our teams, our company, and our members.

We believe in being bold, dreaming big, and taking risks, while also working together, embracing our diverse perspectives, and giving each other honest feedback. Our culture remains deeply entrepreneurial, encouraging every Chimer to see themselves as stewards of our mission to help everyday Americans unlock their financial progress.

We know that to achieve our mission, we must earn and keep people's trust—so we hold ourselves to the highest standards of integrity in everything we do. These aren't just words on a wall—our values are embedded in every aspect of our business, serving as a north star that guides us as we work to help millions achieve their financial potential.

Because if we don't—who will?

*Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by The Bancorp Bank, N.A. or Stride Bank, N.A., Members FDIC.

What we offer for our full‑time, regular employees

• Our in‑office work policy is designed to keep you connected - with four days a week in the office and Fridays from home for those near one of our offices, plus team and company‑wide events depending on location. Whether you’re coming in regularly or are part of our fully remote program, you’ll stay engaged with your work and teammates.
• Benefits that support your work and life, including backup child, elder, and pet care and subsidized commuter benefits for eligible employees.
• Comprehensive health, financial, and wellbeing benefits designed to support you at every stage of life.
• Generous vacation policy and company‑wide paid days off
• 1% of your time off to support local community organizations of your choice
• Annual wellness stipend to use towards eligible wellness related expenses
• Up to 22 weeks of paid parental leave for birthing parents and 12 weeks of paid parental leave for non‑birthing parents
• Access to family planning reimbursement
• A challenging and fulfilling opportunity to join one of the most experienced teams in FinTech and help millions unlock financial progress

We know that great work can’t be done without a diverse team and inclusive environment. That’s why we specifically look for individuals of varying strengths, skills, backgrounds, and ideas to join our team. We believe this gives us a competitive advantage to better serve our members and helps us all grow as Chimers and individuals.

Chime is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, marital or family status, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other legally protected basis under provincial, federal, state, and local laws, regulations, or ordinances. We will also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of state and local laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, Cook County Ordinance, NYC Fair Chance Act, and the LA City Fair Chance Ordinance, and consistent with Canadian provincial and federal laws. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation during any stage of the application process, please contact: [e-mail].

To learn more about how Chime collects and uses your personal information during the application process, please see the Chime Applicant Privacy Notice.