Staff Software Engineer, Data Quality and Governance

Stripe; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 270,000; Full time

Job summary

Stripe is seeking a Staff Data Engineer in Seattle within the Data Quality and Governance org to lead scalable data discovery and metadata platforms. You will mentor engineers and drive end-to-end data initiatives to raise data quality standards across the company.

You will collaborate with product and engineering teams to define canonical datasets, ensure trustworthy data, and leverage AI/LLM and streaming tech to scale data pipelines. This role emphasizes autonomy and collaboration.

Qualifications

• Staff-level role with 10+ years building and operating data systems.
• Strong distributed systems fundamentals for high-availability tooling.
• Proficiency in backend languages (Scala/Java/Go) and SQL.
• Excellent cross-functional collaboration and ability to balance trade-offs.
• Customer-focused, autonomous in ambiguous environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead outcomes for a team of engineers, providing mentorship and guidance.
• Build and operate large-scale data discovery, metadata, or catalog platforms.
• Manage data pipelines SLAs and data warehouses supporting stakeholders.
• Collaborate with PMs and teams to ensure trustworthy datasets.
• Leverage AI/LLM capabilities to analyze and improve data quality.
• Drive key data initiatives end-to-end with high quality and timely delivery.

Skills

Leadership

Distributed systems

SQL expertise

Scala/Java/Go

Cross-functional collaboration

Data quality

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Iceberg

Kafka

Flink

Spark

Airflow

Hive Metastore

Pinot

Trino

AWS

Job description

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