Staff Data Systems Engineer — Ingestion & APIs

Northbeam; San Francisco, Los Angeles (CA, CA); Hybrid; USD 190,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity package

Healthcare benefits

401(k) plan

Flexible PTO

12 company-paid holidays

Parental leave

Work-from-home stipend

Job summary

Northbeam is seeking a Staff Engineer to own the architecture of the data ingestion and integration platform, guiding how we onboard new sources and ensure reliable data flows. You will influence product, engineering, and business decisions across the company and mentor peers.

You’ll work across a modern stack including Python, SQL, Airflow, Docker, and Kubernetes while shaping platform durability and observability in a fast-growing, remote-friendly environment.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software or data engineering experience, including significant time owning the architecture of large-scale ingestion, ETL, or integration platforms.
• Deep proficiency in Python, and strong SQL and cloud data warehouse experience (BigQuery or equivalent).
• A track record of designing API-based ETL systems at scale — REST, GraphQL, webhooks, and the authentication and multi-tenancy concerns that come with them.
• Production depth with orchestration (Airflow or similar) and containerized infrastructure (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Demonstrated technical leadership: setting direction, aligning engineers who don't report to you, and improving how a team builds, not just what it ships.
• Experience mentoring engineers and elevating engineering practice across a team or org.
• Sound judgment about when to invest in platform durability and when to ship and move on.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture of our ingestion and integration platform, setting the patterns that determine how quickly and safely we onboard new data sources.
• Define technical direction for event-driven and batch processing across the company, and make the build/buy and migration calls that go with it.
• Establish the standards for observability, data freshness, and failure handling that the data systems team works to — and hold the bar on them.
• Lead design across team boundaries, working with data engineering, infrastructure, and product to keep platform decisions coherent.
• Raise the ceiling of the engineers around you through design review, mentorship, and the code you write.
• Identify the platform problems nobody has scoped yet, make the case for solving them, and drive them to completion.

Skills

Python

SQL

BigQuery

REST APIs

GraphQL

Airflow

Docker

Kubernetes

Mentoring

Leadership

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

OAuth 2.0

Job description

Northbeam is seeking a Staff Engineer to own the architecture of the data ingestion and integration platform, guiding how we onboard new sources and ensure reliable data flows. You will influence product, engineering, and business decisions across the company and mentor peers.

You’ll work across a modern stack including Python, SQL, Airflow, Docker, and Kubernetes while shaping platform durability and observability in a fast-growing, remote-friendly environment.