Staff Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure

Patreon; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Patreon is seeking a Senior/Staff Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure to architect and operate large‑scale batch and streaming platforms powering product features, analytics, and experimentation.

You will stand up event‑driven systems (Kafka, Kinesis, Pub/Sub) for real‑time ingestion and build self‑serve data platforms enabling engineers, data scientists, and analysts to safely work with data. This remote role offers potential in‑person attendance in NYC or SF.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including 4+ years focused on data or platform infrastructure.
• Deep, hands-on experience architecting both batch (Airflow, Dagster, or similar) and stream processing systems at scale (Spark, Flink, Kafka Streams, or similar).
• Familiarity with data quality, lineage, observability, and governance tooling.
• Strong programming skills in Python (Java, Scala, or Go a plus) and SQL.
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure and broad fluency across data stores: Object storage (S3), RDMS (MySQL, or Postgres, etc.), Key value (DynamoDB), OLAP (Clickhouse, Pinot, or Druid, etc.), search/indexing (Elasticsearch) plus data flow patterns for keeping them in sync with source systems.
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills; comfortable driving cross‑functional infrastructure decisions.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field, or the equivalent.

Responsibilities

• Architect, build, and operate large scale batch and streaming platforms that directly power Patreon product features, analytics, and experimentation.
• Stand up and scale event-driven and streaming systems (Kafka, Kinesis, PubSub, or similar) for real-time data ingestion, transformation, aggregation, and delivery to different data storage systems.
• Build self-serve data platforms that let engineers, data scientists, and analysts safely discover data, define contracts, and create and operate pipelines with minimal friction.
• Partner with the broader Infrastructure, Platform, and product engineering to drive architectural decisions across storage, compute, deployment, and orchestration to align the data ecosystem with Patreon’s roadmap.
• Build the tooling, monitoring, and observability that gives engineers confidence in the data platform's reliability and performance.
• Mentor other engineers on infrastructure and streaming best practices, and help shape the long‑term data infrastructure roadmap.

Skills

Batch processing

Streaming systems

Python

Java/Scala/Go

SQL

Cloud infrastructure

Data governance

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/CE

Tools

Airflow

Dagster

Spark

Flink

Kafka Streams

Kinesis

Elasticsearch

Job description

Patreon is a media and community platform where over 300,000 creators give their biggest fans access to exclusive work and experiences. We offer creators a variety of ways to engage with their fans and build a lasting business including: paid memberships, free memberships, community chats, live video, and selling to fans directly with one-time purchases.

Ultimately our goal is simple: fund the creative class. And we're leaders in that space, with:

• $10 billion+ generated by creators since Patreon's inception

• 100 million+ free memberships for fans who may not be ready to pay just yet, and

• 25 million+ paid memberships on Patreon today.

We're continuing to invest heavily in building the best creator platform with the best team in the creator economy and are looking for a Senior/Staff Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure to support our mission.

This role is remote, with optional in-person attendance in either the New York or San Francisco office.

About the Team

The Data Foundations team at Patreon builds the pipelines, models, and infrastructure that power both customer-facing and internal data products. The Data Infrastructure function within the team owns the foundational platform — streaming, batch, and data lake infrastructure — that every data pipeline, analytics workload, and ML system at Patreon runs on.

You’ll join a small, high-craft team that partners across Product, Data Science, Infrastructure, and the rest of Engineering to make sure the platform underneath all of that work is reliable, scalable, and easy for other engineers to build on.

About the Role

• Architect, build, and operate large scale batch and streaming platforms that directly power Patreon product features, analytics, and experimentation.

• Stand up and scale event-driven and streaming systems (Kafka, Kinesis, PubSub, or similar) for real-time data ingestion, transformation, aggregation, and delivery to different data storage systems.

• Build self-serve data platforms that let engineers, data scientists, and analysts safely discover data, define contracts, and create and operate pipelines with minimal friction.

• Partner with the broader Infrastructure, Platform, and product engineering to drive architectural decisions across storage, compute, deployment, and orchestration to align the data ecosystem with Patreon’s roadmap.

• Build the tooling, monitoring, and observability that gives engineers confidence in the data platform's reliability and performance.

• Mentor other engineers on infrastructure and streaming best practices, and help shape the long‑term data infrastructure roadmap.

What you’ll need:

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including 4+ years focused on data or platform infrastructure.

• Deep, hands‑on experience architecting both batch (Airflow, Dagster, or similar) and stream processing systems at scale (Spark, Flink, Kafka Streams, or similar).

• Familiarity with data quality, lineage, observability, and governance tooling.

• Strong programming skills in Python (Java, Scala, or Go a plus) and SQL.

• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure and broad fluency across data stores: Object storage (S3), RDMS (MySQL, or Postgres, etc.), Key value (DynamoDB), OLAP (Clickhouse, Pinot, or Druid, etc.), search/indexing (Elasticsearch) plus data flow patterns for keeping them in sync with source systems.

• Excellent collaboration and communication skills; comfortable driving cross‑functional infrastructure decisions.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field, or the equivalent.

Bonus if you have:

• Experience with Delta Lake/Iceberg, AWS, or Databricks.

• Contributed to open‑source streaming or infrastructure tooling.

• Experience supporting ML/AI workflows, training pipelines, or evaluation systems.

We hire talented and passionate people from different backgrounds because workplace diversity and inclusion is critical to our ability to serve creators worldwide. If you’re excited about a role but your past experience doesn’t match with every bullet point outlined above, we strongly encourage you to apply anyway. If you’re a creator at heart, are energized by our mission, and share our company values, we’d love to hear from you.

About Patreon

Patreon powers creators to do what they love and get paid by the people who love what they do. Our team is passionate about making this mission and our core values come to life every day in our work. Through this work, our Patronauts:

• Put Creators First | They’re the reason we’re here. When creators win, we win.

• Build with Craft | We sign our name to every deliverable, just like the creators we serve.

• Make it Happen | We don’t quit. We learn and deliver.

• Win Together | We grow as individuals. We win as a team.

Patreon is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We provide employment opportunities without regard to age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, veteran status, or any other protected class. If you need a reasonable accommodation during the interview process, please let us know via email at accommodations@patreon.

Patreon offers a competitive benefits package including and not limited to salary, equity plans, healthcare, flexible time off, company holidays and recharge days, commuter benefits, lifestyle stipends, learning and development stipends, patronage, parental leave, and 401k plan with matching.

Patreon operates under a hybrid work model, where employees based in office locations are expected to come into the office two days per week, excluding sick time and paid leave. The goal of this policy is to be intentional about the in‑person time we spend together to strengthen the feeling of community at Patreon. Candidates hired into remote‑eligible roles are not expected to meet the same requirements.

At Patreon, we believe in fair and transparent pay. In compliance with New York and California pay transparency laws, we are sharing the expected salary range for this role.

The posted salary range is dependent on the location and the level. This range may encompass multiple levels within the role’s job family. The final offer will be based on candidate’s experience, skills, competencies, and geographic location, aligning with the appropriate job level within Patreon’s leveling framework. For remote employees located outside CA and NY, salary may vary based on location and local market conditions.

Patreon reserves the right to modify or update compensation and benefits at any time.