Staff Software Engineer, Data Quality and Governance

Stripe; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 204,000 - 305,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Bonus

401(k)

Medical benefits

Dental benefits

Vision benefits

Wellness stipend

Job summary

Stripe is seeking a Staff-level Data Platform Lead to guide a team of engineers building a scalable data catalog and governance stack. You will own data pipelines, warehouses, and associated platforms while ensuring data quality for critical stakeholders across the company.

This role emphasizes mentorship, collaboration, and strategic execution across product and engineering teams. You will apply distributed systems expertise, SQL proficiency, and backend development experience (Scala/Java/Go)

Qualifications

• Senior staff-level role requiring 10+ years building data systems and leading teams.
• Strong distributed systems fundamentals for high-availability data tooling.
• Ability to diagnose data quality issues across large pipelines.
• Backend development in Scala/Java/Go and strong SQL.
• Customer-focused, with cross-functional collaboration.
• Autonomy in ambiguous environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead technical outcomes for a team of engineers with mentorship.
• Build and operate large-scale data discovery and catalog platforms.
• Manage SLAs for data pipelines and full-stack apps.
• Collaborate with product managers to create canonical datasets.
• Leverage AI/LLM for data insights.
• Drive key data initiatives end-to-end.
• Foster inclusive, innovative team culture.

Skills

Distributed systems

SQL

Backend development (Scala/Java/Go)

Cross-functional collaboration

Mentorship

Data catalog / metadata

AI/LLM usage

Tools

Iceberg

Kafka

Flink

Spark

Airflow

Hive Metastore

Pinot

Trino

AWS Cloud

Job description

About Stripe

Stripe is a financial infrastructure platform for businesses. Millions of companies—from the world’s largest enterprises to the most ambitious startups—use Stripe to accept payments, grow their revenue, and accelerate new business opportunities. Our mission is to increase the GDP of the internet, and we have a staggering amount of work ahead. That means you have an unprecedented opportunity to put the global economy within everyone’s reach while doing the most important work of your career.

Who we are

About Stripe

Stripe is a financial infrastructure platform for businesses. Millions of companies—from the world’s largest enterprises to the most ambitious startups—use Stripe to accept payments, grow their revenue, and accelerate new business opportunities. Our mission is to increase the GDP of the internet, and we have a staggering amount of work ahead. That means you have an unprecedented opportunity to put the global economy within everyone’s reach while doing the most important work of your career.

About The Team

Data Quality and Governance owns the infrastructure that makes Stripe's data trustworthy and findable - the Data Catalog, the Knowledge Graph Service, dataset tiering and governance standards, lineage tracking, and the quality scoring system (DQPD) that every engineering team reports against. They're the team that defines what \"good data\" means at Stripe and then builds the enforcement and measurement tools to drive adoption across the company.

What you’ll do

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical outcomes for a team of ambitious, talented engineers, providing mentorship, guidance, and support to ensure their success


• Build and operate large-scale data discovery, metadata, or catalog platform


• Develop strong subject matter expertise and manage the SLAs of data pipelines and full stack web applications that support critical stakeholders


• Collaborate with product managers and peers across the company to create/improve canonical datasets and data warehouses, use golden paths, and ensure Stripes and customers are using trustworthy data


• Leverage AI/LLM and Agents at scale to produce and analyze high-quality data on ambiguous problems


• Have the opportunity to drive the execution of key data initiatives for Stripe, overseeing the entire development lifecycle from planning to delivery while maintaining high standards of quality and timely completion


• Foster a collaborative and inclusive work environment, promoting innovation, knowledge sharing, and continuous improvement within the team

Who you are

We’re looking for someone who meets the minimum requirements to be considered for the role. If you meet these requirements, you are encouraged to apply. The preferred qualifications are a bonus, not a requirement.

Minimum Requirements

• This is a Staff-level role — that typically means 10+ years of experience building and operating data systems, pipelines, warehouses, infrastructure, and leading teams to deliver exceptional solutions


• Strong distributed systems fundamentals are a must — this team's core services are high-availability infrastructure that the rest of Stripe's data tooling depends on


• An inquisitive nature in diving into data inconsistencies to pinpoint issues, and resolve deep rooted data quality issues


• Knowledge of a backend development language (such as Scala, Java, or Go) and strong SQL experience


• Extreme customer focus, with a commitment to partnering with product, leaders across the business, and other Stripe engineers to understand their use cases


• Effective cross-functional collaboration, with the ability to think rigorously, communicate clearly, and make or coordinate difficult decisions and trade-offs


• Thrive with high autonomy and responsibility in an ambiguous environment


• Ability to foster and work in a healthy, inclusive, challenging, and supportive work environment

Preferred Qualifications

• Our stack is made up of Iceberg, Kafka, Change Data Capture, Flink, Spark, Airflow, Hive Metastore, Pinot, Trino, and AWS Cloud - experience with all or some of these tools is a huge plus


• Influencing open-source contributions


• Experience creating and maintaining data marts / warehouses to power business reporting needs


• Experience collaborating with Product, Go-To-Market, or Sales / Marketing teams


• Genuine enjoyment of innovation and a deep interest in understanding how things work, with the ability to question and direct architectural decisions


• Strong written and verbal communication skills for various audiences, including leadership, users, and company-wide

Hybrid work at Stripe

This role is available either in an office or a remote location (35+ miles or 56+ km from a Stripe office).

In-office expectations

Office-assigned Stripes spend at least 50% of the time in a given month in their local office or with users. This hits a balance between bringing people together for in-person collaboration and learning from each other, while supporting flexibility about how to do this in a way that makes sense for individuals and their teams.

Working remotely at Stripe

A remote location is defined as being 35 miles (56 kilometers) or more from one of our offices. While you would be welcome to come into the office for team/business meetings, on-sites, meet-ups, and events, our expectation is you would regularly work from home rather than a Stripe office. Stripe does not cover the cost of relocating to a remote location. We encourage you to apply for roles that match the location where you currently live or plan to live.

Pay and benefits

The annual US base salary range for this role is $203,600 - $305,400. For sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings (\"OTE\") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role. This salary range may be inclusive of several career levels at Stripe and will be narrowed during the interview process based on a number of factors, including the candidate’s experience, qualifications, and location. Applicants interested in this role and who are not located in the US may request the annual salary range for their location during the interview process.

Additional benefits for this role may include: equity, company bonus or sales commissions/bonuses; 401(k) plan; medical, dental, and vision benefits; and wellness stipends.

We look forward to hearing from you.

At Stripe, we're looking for people with passion, grit, and integrity. You're encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn't precisely match the job description. Your skills and passion will stand out—and set you apart—especially if your career has taken some extraordinary twists and turns. At Stripe, we welcome diverse perspectives and people who think rigorously and aren't afraid to challenge assumptions. Join us.