Staff Engineer, Data

Greenlight Rent; New York (NY); Remote; USD 195,000 - 235,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-first culture

Monthly lifestyle stipend

Stock option plan

Job summary

Greenlight Rent, a leading rental housing platform, seeks a Staff Engineer on the data team to shape data systems end-to-end—from application services to warehouse and models. You’ll pair with product, finance, and ops to turn rental-housing problems into reliable software and trustworthy data.

Teams are small and hands-on; engineers balance building with leadership duties, mentoring, and advancing data quality, security, and AI-assisted coding practices.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with senior/staff level
• Deep expertise in at least one modern backend language and shipping systems
• Strong data engineering: SQL, data modeling, warehouses, transformation and orchestration
• Experience designing scalable APIs, distributed systems and relational databases
• Hands-on cloud infra experience (AWS or GCP) and CI/CD
• Product sense: focus on usefulness and outcomes, not just code
• Familiarity with AI coding tools and judgement on output quality
• Track record leading ambiguous, high-impact projects to completion

Responsibilities

• Design and build data foundations: event/data models, ingestion from databases, warehouses and partner integrations
• Write production code: services, APIs and jobs generating/using data
• Own measurable outcomes with product partners and set scope/sequencing
• Ensure data reliability and correctness for close, reporting and partner data
• Write high-quality code, establish testing, reviews, observability and data quality
• Make pragmatic buy/build decisions and document them clearly
• Mentor engineers through pairing, design reviews and feedback
• Keep data secure and compliant with regulations

Skills

8+ years experience

Backend programming

Python

Ruby

Go

TypeScript

SQL & Data modeling

Data warehouses (Snowflake/BigQuery)

dbt

Airflow / Prefect

AWS / GCP

Tools

Snowflake

BigQuery

dbt

Prefect

Airflow

AWS

GCP

Job description

About Greenlight Rent

Greenlight Rent, formerly Rhino + Jetty, is making housing more affordable and accessible for millions of renters each year. We're the market-leading rental housing platform building simpler, more accessible ways for people to move into homes — and for property managers to lease with confidence.

Our technology removes friction from the move-in process, lowers upfront costs for renters, and helps property managers make faster, more accurate decisions. We support a network of 3 million rental units nationwide and work with 47 of the NMHC Top 100 property owners, including Greystar, Brookfield, Asset Living, UDR, and more.

We pioneered security deposit insurance and continue to push the industry forward with a growing suite of products — from deposit management to lease guarantees and loss-of-employment protection. We're growing quickly, tackling real problems at scale, and building technology that's changing how renting works.

The role

As a Staff Engineer on our data team, you'll be a senior software engineer who builds the systems that produce, move and serve our data, not just the pipelines and queries on top of them. You'll set technical direction for how data flows through Greenlight Rent, from the application services and APIs that generate it to the warehouse, models and tools the business runs on. You'll partner with product, finance and operations to turn rental-housing problems into reliable software and trustworthy data.

Our teams are small, about three engineers each, and AI tools let every one of them cover a lot of ground. Staff Engineers here stay hands‑on: most of the week goes to building, and the rest to leading the team and growing the people on it.

What you’ll do

• Design and build the data foundations of Greenlight Rent: event and data models, ingestion from our application databases and partner integrations (property management systems, payment providers), and the warehouse and transformation layer
• Write production application code too: the services, APIs and jobs that generate and use data, not only what happens downstream of them
• Own measurable outcomes with your product and business partners, and make the scope and sequencing calls that get you there
• Own the reliability and correctness of the data the business depends on, including monthly close, reporting and partner data
• Write high-quality code and set standards for testing, code review, observability and data quality, including when AI-generated code needs a closer look
• Make pragmatic build‑vs‑buy and tradeoff decisions, and document them clearly
• Mentor engineers through pairing, design reviews and feedback, and lead a few direct reports
• Keep sensitive financial and personal data secure and compliant

What you bring

• 8+ years of professional software engineering, including technical leadership at the senior or staff level
• A software engineer first: deep expertise in at least one modern backend language (e.g., Python, Ruby, Go, TypeScript or Java), and a record of building and shipping application systems, not only data pipelines
• Strong data engineering: SQL, data modeling, warehouses (e.g., Snowflake or BigQuery), transformation (e.g., dbt) and orchestration (e.g., Prefect or Airflow)
• Experience designing and scaling APIs, distributed systems and relational databases
• Hands‑on experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS or GCP) and CI/CD
• Product sense: you care about why something gets built and whether it worked, not just how it's built
• Fluency with AI coding tools, and the judgment to know when their output isn't good enough
• A track record of leading ambiguous, high-impact projects to completion

Nice to have

• Experience in fintech, insurtech, payments or proptech
• Familiarity with regulated environments (e.g., SOC 2, PCI, consumer‑finance rules)
• Experience building 0-to-1 products or data platforms at a startup or growth‑stage company
• Experience managing engineers, or a wish to grow into it

Compensation & Benefits

Base Salary Range: $195,000 - $235,000

Greenlight Rent has partnered with a number of compensation benchmarking tools to determine competitive and fair market pay bands for our size and stage. Our goal is to ensure each employee is paid equitably and competitively while also maintaining a consistent and standardized methodology.

Individual pay decisions are based on a number of factors including qualifications for the role, experience level and balancing internal equity relative to other teammates.

Base Salary Is Just One Part Of Our Total Rewards Package Here At Greenlight Rent. In Connection With This Position, We Also Offer

• Competitive cash compensation package including base salary, milestone based bonus, and other financial perks
• Medical, Dental, and Vision coverage (up to 90% employer contribution) - eligible from your start date
• 401(k), HSA, Life & Disability Insurance Coverage ($0 employee contribution for additional insurances)
• Unlimited PTO Policy
• Generous Paid Parental Leave
• Stock option plan to give our employees a direct stake in Greenlight’s success
• Remote‑first work culture with opportunities to collaborate as a team in person
• Monthly lifestyle stipend to fit your needs (meals, wellness, co‑working)