Staff Backend Engineer – Data Platform

Jobtailor; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 210,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Jobtailor in Seattle seeks a Senior Staff Engineer to architect and build backend services powering Haus’s data platform, and to own high-throughput ingestion from third-party APIs.

You will align data contracts, schema evolution, testing standards, and drive architectural decisions across GCP, BigQuery, dbt, and Python while mentoring 6–10 engineers.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience with deep backend and data expertise.
• Solid, hands-on experience with cloud data warehouses or lakehouses (BigQuery preferred).
• Deep SQL/dbt experience, including schema design and query performance.
• Expert-level Python for building production services.
• Track record of staff-level technical leadership across multiple workstreams.
• Experience writing design documents that others build from.
• Excellent written and verbal communication; able to defend technical decisions to stakeholders.
• Strong backend engineering and data experience.
• Contributions to open-source data frameworks or tooling are a bonus.

Responsibilities

• Architect and build backend services powering Haus’s data platform
• Build high-throughput ingestion from third-party APIs
• Develop normalization services, data contracts, and the orchestration control plane
• Solve distributed-systems problems including exactly-once semantics, idempotent reprocessing and backfills, schema evolution, and resilient third-party API handling
• Own lakehouse/warehouse schema and data-model design
• Establish dbt architecture, data quality frameworks, lineage, and BigQuery cost/performance practices
• Set testing, API design, code review, observability, and CI/CD standards
• Drive architectural decisions across the GCP, BigQuery, dbt, and Python stack
• Align with downstream engineering and data science teams
• Mentor senior engineers and influence the broader organization’s data strategy
• Partner with engineering leadership, product engineering, and data science as the senior-most individual contributor on a 6–10 person team

Skills

Backend Architecture

BigQuery Data Warehouse

SQL/dbt

Python

Technical Leadership

Staff-level leadership

Tools

BigQuery

GCP

Snowflake

Databricks

Iceberg

Job description

• Architect and build backend services powering Haus’s data platform
• Build high-throughput ingestion from third-party APIs
• Develop normalization services, data contracts, and the orchestration control plane
• Solve distributed-systems problems including exactly-once semantics, idempotent reprocessing and backfills, schema evolution, and resilient third-party API handling
• Own lakehouse/warehouse schema and data-model design
• Establish dbt architecture, data quality frameworks, lineage, and BigQuery cost/performance practices
• Set testing, API design, code review, observability, and CI/CD standards
• Drive architectural decisions across the GCP, BigQuery, dbt, and Python stack
• Align with downstream engineering and data science teams
• Mentor senior engineers and influence the broader organization’s data strategy
• Partner with engineering leadership, product engineering, and data science as the senior-most individual contributor on a 6–10 person team

Requirements

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with deep backend and data expertise
• Solid, hands‑on experience with a cloud data warehouse or lakehouse; BigQuery preferred, or Snowflake, Databricks, or Iceberg‑based stacks
• Deep SQL/dbt experience, including schema design, correctness, and performance of complex analytical queries
• Expert‑level Python experience for building production services
• Track record of Staff‑level technical leadership across multiple workstreams
• Experience writing design documents others build from
• Excellent written and verbal communication; able to defend technical decisions to engineering, product, and executive stakeholders
• Strong backend engineering and data experience
• Contributions to open‑source data frameworks or tooling are a bonus

Core Competencies

Demonstrates extensive expertise in backend service architecture, cloud data warehouse design, and data modeling, with a strong focus on BigQuery and dbt. Proven ability to lead technical initiatives, mentor teams, and communicate effectively with stakeholders across engineering and product domains.

Highest-signal resume keywords

• Backend Service Architecture
• BigQuery Data Warehouse Design
• SQL/dbt Schema Design
• Expert Python Development
• Technical Leadership

ATS Optimization Keywords

Hard Skills

• Backend Engineering
• Data Modeling
• Cloud Data Warehouse
• SQL
• Dbt
• Python
• API Design
• Data Quality Frameworks
• Observability Standards
• CI/CD Practices

Soft Skills

• Excellent Communication
• Mentoring
• Influencing Stakeholders

Industry Keywords

• Data Platform
• Distributed Systems
• Data Contracts
• Ingestion from APIs
• Schema Evolution

Tools & Technologies

• BigQuery
• GCP
• Snowflake
• Databricks
• Iceberg