Staff Backend Engineer, Data Platform

Osmo; Somerville (NJ); On-site; USD 160,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Osmo is seeking a Staff Backend Engineer for the Data Platform to own the canonical data model and the surrounding platform. You will lead schema design, data modeling, and architecture across ingestion, routing, and access control, enabling multiple teams to read and write consistently.

You will work with Python, Postgres, BigQuery, and containerized services on Cloud Run, with a focus on reliability and audit history.

Qualifications

• The candidate has led a shared data model across multiple teams and ensured consistent schema.
• Strong skills in data modeling, temporal/audit requirements, and schema evolution.
• Demonstrated ability to balance technical debt with product needs.

Responsibilities

• Own canonical schema design and evolution while services read/write through the model.
• Define system architecture, including systems of record, replication, and access control.
• Design the write path for concurrent automated and human writes with audit trails.
• Set data modeling standards and guide changes to shared entities.

Skills

Async event-driven

Data modeling

Schema design

Python

PostgreSQL

BigQuery

Cloud Run

Idempotency

Tools

PostgreSQL

BigQuery

GCS

Docker

Cloud Run

Job description

Who we are at Osmo:

Osmo is a digital olfaction company, on a mission to give computers a sense of smell to improve the health and wellbeing of human life. Why? Our sense of smell both enriches and saves lives, and has a deep and direct connection to our emotions and memory.

Olfactory Intelligence has applications across industries including fragrance, manufacturing, security, medicine, and more. We believe in the power of automation and thoughtfully applied AI/ML to solve problems beyond the reach of human intuition alone. Osmo is headquartered in Elizabeth, NJ, with an additional office in Somerville, MA.

Osmo is looking for a Staff Backend Engineer, Data Platform. Our team owns the company's canonical data model and the platform around it: the knowledge graph, the APIs, the integrations in and out of it, and the console that manages it. It spans chemistry, machine learning, sensory science, and manufacturing, where the definitions themselves are often contested.

The platform is at the point where the decisions get harder: more domains in the model, more systems reading and writing through us, and more consumers who need the same data shaped differently. You would own the architecture through that transition.

Key Responsibilities

• Own consistency across systems that each hold their own copy, under retries, reordering, and partial failure, from ingestion off upstream systems through routing each use to the right destination
• Lead canonical schema design and evolution while systems are already reading and writing through the model, covering migrations, versioning, and reference data with effective dates so past decisions stay provable
• Define the system architecture, including systems of record, ownership boundaries, replication strategy, and access control
• Design the write path where automated and human writes arrive concurrently and sometimes conflict, covering validation, permissions, and audit history complete enough to reconstruct who changed what and why
• Set the data modeling standards, and be the engineer consulted before shared entities change

Required Qualifications

The strongest signal for this role is having been accountable for a shared data model that multiple teams depended on: getting those teams to agree what a concept means, encoding that agreement in the schema, and keeping it consistent across systems that each hold their own copy, under retries, reordering, and partial failure.

Required

• Depth in asynchronous and event-driven service design, including idempotency, concurrency control, and the integration patterns that keep systems consistent
• Advanced data modeling and schema design, including temporal and audit requirements where you have to reconstruct what the system knew at a point in time
• Sound judgment on technical debt, meaning deliberate tradeoffs, a clear view of what they cost, and the discipline to know where not to compromise
• Demonstrated impact on team capability, including standards that persisted beyond your involvement and engineers whose growth you can speak to specifically
• Strong partnership with non-technical domain experts, translating what they ask for into what the data platform should actually build, and technical tradeoffs into decisions they can make
• Hands-on Python across our stack or close equivalents, including Postgres, BigQuery, GCS, and containerized services and scheduled jobs on Cloud Run

Nice to have

• Establishing data standards or architectural practice in an organization without them
• Collaborating with scientific or technical domain experts and translating their vocabulary into a data model

How we work

We use AI coding tools heavily and expect engineers to work that way, with judgment about where output needs review.

We are committed to recruiting, developing, and retaining an incredible team optimized for a diversity of thought, background, and approaches.

For all Full-Time Employees, compensation is just one component of Osmo’s total rewards approach, which is designed to support the well-being, growth, and long-term success of our team members. Depending on the role, this may include base salary or contract-based pay, along with access to health, dental, and vision coverage; a 401(k) retirement savings plan with company match; flexible paid time off and company holidays; and equity or incentive compensation for eligible roles. Actual compensation will vary based on factors such as experience, skills, location, internal equity, and other relevant business considerations. Osmo regularly reviews pay ranges and compensation structures to ensure they remain competitive, equitable, and aligned with current market data.

All employment decisions and responsibilities are determined based on current ability and your ability to grow, without regard to race, color, gender identity, sex, sexual orientation, religion, age, marital status, physical, mental, or sensory disability, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

Recruitment & Staffing Agencies: Osmo does not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than candidates. The submission of unsolicited resumes by recruitment or staffing agencies to Osmo or its employees is strictly prohibited unless contacted directly by the Osmo Talent Acquisition team. Any resume submitted by an agency in the absence of a signed agreement will automatically become the property of Osmo and Osmo will not owe any referral or other fees with respect thereto.

In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete the required employment eligibility verification form upon hire