Senior Software Engineer, Data Platform

Persona; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance

401(k) contribution

Unlimited PTO

Quarterly mental health days

Professional development stipend

Job summary

Persona is seeking a Senior Engineer for the Data Platform team in San Francisco, California. In this role, you will design and operate systems that manage data at massive scale, working on datalakes and data pipelines. This position demands expertise in software engineering and distributed systems.

You will collaborate closely with engineering, data science, and infrastructure teams to ensure performance, reliability, and cost efficiency of the platform.

The role offers comprehensive benefits including medical, dental, vision, and unlimited PTO for full-time employees.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in software engineering, especially in data infrastructure.
• Proficiency in Python; excited to learn Go.
• Hands-on with big data and streaming technologies.

Responsibilities

• Build and scale the datalake and ingestion pipelines.
• Own streaming and batch ingestion services.
• Develop query and analytics capabilities on the datalake.

Skills

Software Engineering

Data Infrastructure

Python

Big Data Technologies

Streaming Technologies

Distributed Systems

Communication

Tools

Spark

Kafka

Flink

Go

ClickHouse

Job description

About Persona

Persona is the configurable identity platform built for businesses in a digital‑first world. Verifying individuals and organizations is harder — but more important — than ever, with AI enabling fraudsters to launch sophisticated accounts at scale and regulations evolving rapidly.

We’ve built Persona to support practically every use case and industry — that’s why we’re able to serve a wide range of leading companies. For example, Reddit relies on Persona for age assurance and verification to comply with online safety regulations, protecting younger users while maintaining a seamless experience. Meanwhile, OpenAI relies on Persona to keep bad actors out, protecting one of the world’s most powerful AI platforms from large‑scale abuse in a time when AI is reshaping the way we work and live.

We’re growing rapidly and looking for exceptional people to join us!

About the role

We are looking for passionate engineers who are excited to build the data foundation for the identity layer of the internet. As a senior engineer on the Data Platform team at Persona, you'll design, build, and operate the systems that move and store data at massive scale — an Iceberg datalake, the streaming and batch pipelines that feed it, a multi‑provider warehouse layer, and the services built on top of it. You'll work the full depth of that stack, from raw ingestion through storage layout and compute all the way to the query layer — owning the performance, reliability, and cost of each. You'll set technical direction for major pieces of this platform — making the architecture, storage‑format, and build‑vs‑buy decisions that shape it for years — and raise the bar for the engineers around you. This is a high‑ownership role on a small team, working closely with the rest of engineering, data science, and infrastructure to make the platform fast, reliable, and cost‑efficient at hundreds of billions of records per day.

What you'll do at Persona

• Build and scale our datalake — the pipelines that feed it and the storage design that keeps it fast and efficient.
• Develop high‑throughput data‑movement and ingestion services that bring data into the platform reliably and at scale.
• Own streaming and batch ingestion and the change‑data‑capture pipelines that absorb billions of records and terabytes of data per day.
• Build new query and analytics capabilities directly on the datalake — for use cases that don't fit a traditional warehouse.
• Operate the low‑latency serving layer for real‑time, high‑concurrency access to platform data.
• Partner with infrastructure and product teams to provision, secure, and scale the platform.

What you'll bring to Persona

• 5+ years of experience in software engineering, with deep expertise in data infrastructure or large‑scale distributed systems.
• Proficiency in Python — our primary language across pipelines. Our newest services are written in Go, so you either work in Go today or are excited to ramp into it.
• Hands‑on experience with big‑data or streaming technologies such as Spark, Kafka, or Flink, and interest in lakehouse table formats like Iceberg.
• Experience building and operating scalable data pipelines across structured and unstructured data.
• A track record of leading complex, multi‑quarter infrastructure projects end to end and driving architecture decisions across teams.
• Experience mentoring engineers and operating effectively in ambiguity — defining the problem, not just the solution.
• Strong fundamentals in distributed systems, storage, and performance/cost optimization.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills across engineering, data science, and infrastructure teams.
• Nice to have: ClickHouse, DuckDB, Google Cloud (GCP), Kubernetes, MySQL, MongoDB, Snowflake.

Benefits and Perks

For full‑time US‑based employees (excluding internship and contractor opportunities), Persona offers a wide range of benefits, including medical, dental, and vision, 3% 401(k) contribution, unlimited PTO, quarterly mental health days, family planning benefits, professional development stipend, wellness benefits, among others.

For full‑time UK employees, Persona offers a wide range of benefits, including private medical insurance, dental insurance, a 6% employer pension contribution, unlimited PTO, a monthly wellness stipend, professional development stipend, co‑working stipend, and more.

As part of our interview process, all candidates will be asked to verify their identity with Persona. This step is used solely to confirm that candidates are who they say they are, and will have no impact on hiring decisions.