Staff Data Platform Engineer

Reality Defender Inc.; New York (NY); On-site; USD 210,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare plans with 100% premium for

Dental and Vision plans with 100%

Short/Long-term disability and life保险

FSA/HSA and 401k programs

Equity compensation

20 days of PTO per year

12 weeks of Parental Leave

Learning and Development budget

Monthly wellness benefits

Annual company-sponsored offsite

Daily in-office lunch through UberEats

Commuter benefits

Remote Fridays

Happy Hours and local events

Job summary

Reality Defender is seeking a Staff Data Platform Engineer in New York City to own and scale our AI data platform for multimodal research. You will turn raw media into reliable, reproducible datasets and drive the Databricks lakehouse architecture across Spark and distributed processing.

You will mentor engineers, coordinate with ML researchers, and ensure data governance, security, and cost efficiency while shaping the long-term roadmap.

Qualifications

• 8+ years building data platforms or data infrastructure with production pipelines
• Hands-on experience with distributed processing (Spark, Ray) and lakehouse platforms
• Production experience with Databricks and Spark on AWS, including performance tuning and access controls
• Experience with large unstructured media and metadata at scale
• Strong Python and SQL; able to own platform problems end-to-end
• Experience with Terraform and CI/CD in cloud environments
• Experience building synthetic data generation pipelines is a plus

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end data platform for AI research: ingestion, preprocessing, governance, export of image, video, audio, and text data
• Scale Databricks lakehouse and distributed processing stack; evaluate build-vs-buy decisions
• Build reusable infrastructure for in-house synthetic data generation across modalities
• Ensure datasets are reproducible via versioning, lineage, and quality checks
• Own pipeline reliability, observability, and cost per dataset
• Partner with ML researchers to create self-serve tools; speed up model iteration
• Mentor engineers and raise data engineering standards
• Collaborate with Security and compliance to meet enterprise standards
• Help shape long-term data platform roadmap

Skills

Distributed processing

Python

SQL

Data platforms

Databricks lakehouse

Terraform

CI/CD

Data governance

Versioning & lineage

Tools

Databricks

Unity Catalog

Delta Lake

Spark

Ray

Airflow

Dagster

Job description

Staff Data Platform Engineer

• Location

  New York City

• Employment Type

  FullTime

• Department

  Engineering

• Compensation

  $210K - $260K Offers Equity Offers Bonus
  This salary range is reflective of the total compensation offering for this position.
  The total compensation package for this position may also include eligibility for annual performance bonus, equity, and the benefits. Actual compensation will be determined based on various factors, including the candidate's qualifications, skills, relevant experience, and internal equity. Reality Defender is an equal opportunity employer and committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive culture where everyone can excel.

Who we are.

Reality Defender is an award-winning cybersecurity company helping enterprises and governments detect deepfakes and AI-generated media. Utilizing a patented multi-model approach, Reality Defender is robust against the bleeding edge of generative platforms producing video, audio, imagery, and text media. Reality Defender's API-first deepfake detection platform empowers teams and developers alike to identify fraud, disinformation campaigns, and harmful deepfakes in real time.

Backed by world class investors including DCVC, Illuminate Financial, Y Combinator, Booz Allen Hamilton, IBM, Accenture, Rackhouse, and Argon VC, Reality Defender works with leading enterprise clients, financial institutions, and governments in order to ensure AI-generated media is not used for malicious purposes.

Reality Defender Wins RSA Most Innovative Startup

The Staff Data Platform Engineer Role.

Reality Defender's detection models are only as strong as the data behind them, and every new generative tool raises the bar on the volume and variety of media we need to train and evaluate against. The Staff Data Platform Engineer will own the shared AI data platform behind our vision, audio, and multimodal research, turning acquired and internally generated image, video, audio, and text data into reliable, reproducible datasets, from continuous ingestion through processing, governance, and export. This is a senior, hands‑on role where you'll complete our Databricks and distributed processing platform and build the reusable infrastructure behind our in‑house synthetic data generation, including producing the very deepfakes our models learn to catch. This is a full‑time role, reporting to our Director of Data. Responsibilities include:

• Own the end‑to‑end data platform for AI research: continuous ingestion, preprocessing, governance, and export of image, video, audio, and text data at high volume.
• Complete and scale our Databricks lakehouse and distributed processing stack (Spark, Ray, or similar), making architecture and build‑vs‑buy decisions that hold up as data volume grows.
• Build reusable infrastructure for in‑house synthetic data generation, so researchers can produce new deepfake variants across modalities on demand instead of one‑off.
• Make every dataset reproducible and traceable through versioning, lineage, metadata, quality checks, and stable train/eval splits, so any model result can be tied back to the exact data behind it.
• Own pipeline reliability, observability, and processing cost per dataset as core metrics of the platform.
• Partner with ML researchers to understand their data needs and turn them into self‑serve tools that speed up model iteration.
• Mentor engineers and raise the bar on data engineering practices: code review, testing, documentation, and runbooks.
• Work with Security and compliance stakeholders to make sure data handling, licensing, and access controls meet the standards our enterprise and government clients expect.
• Help shape the long‑term data platform roadmap with engineering and research leadership.

Who you are.

• 8+ years building data platforms or data infrastructure, including staff- or lead‑level ownership of production pipelines that generate, ingest, or deliver data at high volume.
• Deep hands‑on experience with distributed processing (Spark, Ray, or similar) and lakehouse platforms, ideally Databricks, on top of cloud object storage (S3, GCS, or Azure Blob).
• Production experience with Databricks, Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, and Spark on AWS, including performance tuning, access controls, and operational troubleshooting.
• Experience working with large unstructured media such as video, audio, or images, including the realities of large files, decoding and transcoding, and metadata at scale.
• A track record of building reproducible ML datasets: versioning, lineage, data quality validation, and orchestration (Airflow, Dagster, Databricks Workflows, or similar).
• Strong Python and SQL, and the judgment to own ambiguous platform problems end‑to‑end on a lean team.
• Own infrastructure and deployment automation using Terraform and CI/CD, including AWS storage, IAM, compute, Databricks resources, and distributed processing environments.
• Experience building synthetic data generation pipelines or running generative models (diffusion, voice cloning/TTS, video generation) at scale. (nice to have)
• Background supporting ML research teams with training and evaluation data, especially for multimodal models. (nice to have)
• Experience in security, fraud, trust & safety, or another adversarial domain, or at a Series A or B startup where scope regularly outpaces headcount. (nice to have)

Within 12 months, you'll…

• Own a mature, self‑serve data platform that researchers use to create, version, and export datasets without waiting on platform support.
• Have scaled synthetic data generation across vision, audio, and multimodal research, broadening our detection coverage of new generative techniques.
• Deliver reproducible evaluation datasets that let the company compare model versions with confidence.
• Be setting the multi‑year data platform roadmap and leading high‑leverage initiatives beyond the original scope.

What we offer.

Reality Defender offers the following benefits to all our employees, regardless of location:

• Healthcare plans with 100% premium coverage for employees and partial coverage available for dependents
• Dental and Vision plans with 100% premium coverage for employees and their dependents
• Short/Long-term disability and life insurance plans with 100% premium coverage for employees
• FSA/HSA and 401k programs
• Equity compensation
• 20 days of PTO per year
• 12 weeks of Parental Leave
• Learning and Development budget
• Monthly wellness benefits
• Annual company-sponsored offsite

For employees working from Reality Defender's HQ in NYC, we offer the following benefits:

• Daily in‑office lunch through UberEats
• Commuter benefits
• Remote Fridays
• Happy Hours and other local events

Base salary range: 210,000 - 260,000, based on experience, level, and location. Role includes equity.