Staff Data Engineer

Upside; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 170,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading company in San Francisco is seeking a Staff Data Engineer to navigate the entire data stack. This role involves developing core data systems and solving complex data problems, directly impacting customer success. Join a small team and work closely with founders to shape the future of data handling in B2B enterprises.

Benefits

Flexible PTO

Meaningful equity

Top-notch medical, dental, vision insurance

HSA with company contributions

Pre-tax commuter benefits

Qualifications

• Experience in a Staff/Principal technical role.
• Background in handling messy unstructured data.

Responsibilities

• Develop and iterate on core parts of the data platform.
• Build graph knowledge extraction pipelines.

Skills

Big Data

Distributed Compute Systems

Communication

Tools

Spark

Flink

Airflow

Kubernetes

Job description

We are looking for an experienced Staff Data Engineer who can navigate the entire data stack, from setting up core data platform systems, to building graph knowledge extraction pipelines, to dabbling in probabilistic entity resolution and graph algorithms. This is an opportunity to join a small team at the ground level, tackle a diverse set of problems, and work closely with the founders to build and scale the business. You’ll be instrumental in shaping our data systems, solving complex problems, and directly impacting our customer’s success

Description

Location : San Francisco, CA (On-site 4-5 days a week preferred, potential for remote from other west coast locations on a by-case basis)

Target Compensation : $170-250k/year + meaningful equity & benefits

About Upside

Upside ( https://upside.tech ) is building a next-generation knowledge engine, tackling a problem nearly every B2B company struggles with but few have solved: figuring out what's actually working in their go-to-market efforts. Our founding team were previously founders and early employees at Branch, scaling it to over $100M in revenue and a $4B valuation, with a platform processing 10s of billions of events and dozens of terabytes of data every day.

We're now tackling an even more technically challenging problem - understanding enterprise sales and marketing data. Doing this properly involves turning massive, messy enterprise datasets and natural language data into rich, structured knowledge graphs.

Upside has already raised a substantial first round from top-tier investors like XYZ and Emerson Collective and is currently part of HF0 ( https://hf0.com/ ), the most selective startup residency program in the world. For the next two months, everyone on the team (including new hires!) can work out of a mansion in SF - complete with chef-prepared meals, fitness classes, and everything else handled so we (and you!) can fully focus on solving this challenge.

You can read more about the problem we’re tackling here:

We are looking for an experienced Staff Data Engineer who can navigate the entire data stack, from setting up core data platform systems, to building graph knowledge extraction pipelines, to dabbling in probabilistic entity resolution and graph algorithms. This is an opportunity to join a small team at the ground level, tackle a diverse set of problems, and work closely with the founders to build and scale the business. You’ll be instrumental in shaping our data systems, solving complex problems, and directly impacting our customer’s success.

What You’ll Do (Roughly):

• ~40% Data Platform: Our data is already large and only going to grow. You’ll help develop and iterate on core parts of our data platform, including data lake storage systems, triple stores, online data serving layers, and distributed compute platforms.
• ~40% Pipelines: This can range from simple ETL jobs moving tables around, to complex NLP data extraction steps, to high-volume entity resolution, and any other ‘do business logic stuff with large amounts of data’ things that need to be done.
• ~20% Everything else: We’re a small startup, so it’s all hands on deck. While you’ll mostly be working on the backend data systems, you’ll probably also get involved in our LLM agent powered data research systems, help contribute features to our customer dashboard, and pitch in on any other high priority projects.
• You’ll work closely with the founders daily, with everyone on the team getting their hands dirty with whatever needs doing to move the company forward
• We value results over effort, so while we expect you to push hard, it’s the outcome not the hours that matter
• We really value in person collaboration, so if you’re in the SF Bay Area we’ll expect to see you in the office most days of the week, and if you’re anywhere else we’ll want to have you come visit to hang out and work together on a regular basis

We’re looking for someone who thrives on challenging data problems and can operate independently with good judgment. You’re someone who’s not only comfortable wearing multiple hats around data but excels at and enjoys it. Here’s what we’re looking for:

Required Skills:

• Seniority
  • Currently or previously has held a Staff/Principal or equivalent seniority technical role
• Domain Knowledge:
  • Background working with big data and distributed compute systems (Spark, Flink, Airflow, Iceberg, Kubernetes, etc)
  • Background in handling messy unstructured data (web crawls, human generated data like emails, articles, and voice transcriptions, etc)
• Bonus:
  • Experience with knowledge graph systems (triple extraction, NER, entity resolution, graph algorithms, etc)
  • Production usage of transformer models, either in online interactive use cases (chat) or offline systems (batch)

Soft Skills:

• High internal drive, self-motivated, and proactive
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders
• Appetite for understanding business and customer context
• Strong opinions, weakly held – open to feedback and collaboration

Why Upside?

• Big Potential: We are working on a problem every single B2B company has and for which no-one has found a good solution yet. We are taking a radically different approach, and we know that if we can solve the technical challenges behind this, every enterprise company will want to buy our platform.
• Challenging: When we say messy data, we aren’t kidding. But there’s a goldmine of insights to be had, and you’ll get to come in every day with challenging (but solvable) data problems to tackle
• Impact: Your work will directly shape our product and how our customers make decisions
• Growth: Join early and grow with the company. As we scale, your role and responsibilities will evolve, offering you new challenges and opportunities
• Culture: We’re a small, experienced team of operators that values results over effort, close collaboration, and driving decisions with data (for ourselves, and our customers). We’re excited to learn from people who have knowledge and experience we don’t, and to share our’s with you.

What we offer:

• Flexible PTO
• Meaningful equity
• Top-notch medical, dental, vision, and disability insurance, and fringe benefits
• HSA with company contributions
• Pre-tax commuter benefits with a $200/mo employer contribution