Staff Software Engineer, Data Quality and Governance

United States Digital Space LLC; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

United States Digital Space LLC seeks a Staff-level Data Platform Engineer to lead a team of engineers in building and operating large-scale data discovery and catalog platforms. You will ensure high-availability data tooling and SLAs for pipelines and web applications supporting key stakeholders.

You will collaborate with product teams to create canonical datasets, use golden paths, and ensure trustworthy data across Stripes and customers.

Qualifications

• This is a Staff-level role with 10+ years of experience delivering data systems and leading teams.
• Strong distributed systems fundamentals are required for high-availability data tooling.
• Ability to diagnose data quality issues and resolve root causes in complex datasets.
• Knowledge of backend languages such as Scala, Java, or Go and strong SQL.
• Excellent collaboration with product and engineering peers to meet stakeholder needs.
• Comfort working autonomously in an ambiguous environment.
• Ability to communicate clearly to leadership and engineering teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical outcomes for a team of engineers and provide mentorship.
• Build and operate large-scale data discovery, metadata, or catalog platform.
• Develop subject matter expertise and manage SLAs of data pipelines and applications.
• Collaborate with product managers to create canonical datasets and data warehouses.
• Leverage AI/LLM and Agents to analyze data on complex problems.
• Drive the execution of data initiatives from planning to delivery.

Skills

Distributed systems

SQL proficiency

Backend languages (Scala/Java/Go)

Data pipelines

Mentorship

SLA management

Tools

Iceberg

Kafka

Flink

Spark

Airflow

Hive Metastore

Pinot

Trino

AWS Cloud

Job description

Who we are

About the company

the company is a financial infrastructure platform for businesses. Millions of companies - from the world's largest enterprises to the most ambitious startups - use the company 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 the company'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 the company 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 the company, 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. 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 the company'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 the company 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