Staff, Principal Data Engineer

Jobtailor; California (MO); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Orum is seeking a senior data/analytics engineer to define and execute the data platform strategy in the SF Bay Area or Austin, with hybrid work. You will own end-to-end data pipelines, dbt transformations, and Looker dashboards.

You will collaborate with product and Finance, ensure data quality, and scale real-time analytics for product and AI initiatives, leveraging ClickHouse and BigQuery. If you thrive in a fast-growth startup and can communicate complex concepts to diverse audiences, this

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in Data Engineering, Analytics Engineering, Platform Engineering, or related data roles.
• Deep expertise in SQL, data modeling, dimensional modeling, and analytics-oriented schema design.
• Hands-on experience with dbt and modern ELT architectures.
• Strong experience with analytical databases and warehouses such as ClickHouse and BigQuery.
• Experience owning or administering Looker in production, including LookML development and performance optimization.
• Experience with streaming technologies such as Kafka, Pub/Sub, or similar.
• Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, and data platform architecture.
• Ability to operate with high ownership, drive ambiguous initiatives independently.
• Must live in the United States; role is based in the San Francisco Bay Area or Austin, Texas; hybrid work.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive Orum's data platform architecture and technical roadmap
• Build and maintain scalable ETL/ELT pipelines from PostgreSQL, application systems, and event streams into ClickHouse, BigQuery, and other analytical systems
• Design robust dbt transformation layers and reusable, well-documented data models
• Own the reliability, performance, cost, and scalability of ClickHouse and BigQuery workloads
• Build real-time and batch data pipelines for analytics, product, and AI use cases, including large-scale event, call, transcript, and conversational data
• Establish standards for data quality, testing, lineage, governance, and observability
• Own Orum's Looker environment end-to-end, including LookML models, explores, dashboards, permissions, and performance
• Develop a trusted semantic layer with consistent metric and dimension definitions company-wide
• Partner with Product, Finance, GTM, and Operations to translate business questions into scalable data models, dashboards, and self-service analytics
• Support high-impact ad hoc analysis and help establish processes for dashboard ownership, metric governance, and data literacy

Skills

SQL

Data Modeling

dbt

BigQuery

ClickHouse

LookML

Looker

Streaming Technologies

Kafka

Pub/Sub

Cloud Infrastructure

Data Platform Architecture

Data Governance

Data Literacy

Product Analytics

High-Growth Startup Experience

Tools

PostgreSQL

Dbt

Kafka

Pub/Sub

Looker

ClickHouse

BigQuery

Job description

• Define and drive Orum's data platform architecture and technical roadmap
• Build and maintain scalable ETL/ELT pipelines from PostgreSQL, application systems, and event streams into ClickHouse, BigQuery, and other analytical systems
• Design robust dbt transformation layers and reusable, well-documented data models
• Own the reliability, performance, cost, and scalability of ClickHouse and BigQuery workloads
• Build real-time and batch data pipelines for analytics, product, and AI use cases, including large-scale event, call, transcript, and conversational data
• Establish standards for data quality, testing, lineage, governance, and observability
• Own Orum's Looker environment end-to-end, including LookML models, explores, dashboards, permissions, and performance
• Develop a trusted semantic layer with consistent metric and dimension definitions company-wide
• Partner with Product, Finance, GTM, and Operations to translate business questions into scalable data models, dashboards, and self-service analytics
• Support high-impact ad hoc analysis and help establish processes for dashboard ownership, metric governance, and data literacy

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in Data Engineering, Analytics Engineering, Platform Engineering, or related data roles
• Deep expertise in SQL, data modeling, dimensional modeling, and analytics-oriented schema design
• Hands‑on experience with dbt and modern ELT architectures
• Strong experience with analytical databases and warehouses such as ClickHouse and BigQuery
• Experience owning or administering Looker in production, including LookML development and performance optimization
• Experience with streaming technologies such as Kafka, Pub/Sub, or similar
• Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, and data platform architecture
• Ability to operate with high ownership, drive ambiguous initiatives independently, and communicate complex data concepts to technical and non-technical audiences alike
• Deep experience operating ClickHouse at scale
• Experience owning or migrating a Looker implementation
• Experience with product analytics or customer-facing analytics platforms
• Familiarity with LLM infrastructure, embeddings, RAG systems, or AI data pipelines
• Experience with conversational, telephony, or other large-scale unstructured datasets
• Experience in high-growth startup environments
• Must live in the United States; role is based in the San Francisco Bay Area or Austin, Texas
• Must be comfortable with hybrid work, 3 days in office

Core Competencies

Demonstrates expertise in Data Engineering and Analytics Engineering, with a strong focus on building scalable ETL/ELT pipelines, data modeling, and analytics-oriented schema design. Proficient in managing analytical databases like ClickHouse and BigQuery, while ensuring data quality and governance across the organization.

Highest-signal resume keywords

• Data Engineering
• SQL
• ClickHouse
• BigQuery
• Looker

Hard Skills

• ETL
• ELT
• Data Modeling
• Dimensional Modeling
• LookML
• Analytics-Oriented Schema Design
• Streaming Technologies
• Cloud Infrastructure
• Data Platform Architecture
• High-Growth Startup Experience

Soft Skills

• High Ownership
• Independent Initiative
• Complex Data Communication

Industry Keywords

• Data Quality
• Data Governance
• Data Literacy
• Product Analytics
• Customer-Facing Analytics

Tools & Technologies

• PostgreSQL
• Dbt
• Kafka
• Pub/Sub
• Looker