Principal Software Engineer – Data Platform

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San Francisco / $230000 - $280000 annum

INFO

Salary
SALARY:

$230000 - $280000

Location

LOCATION

San Francisco

Job Type
JOB TYPE

Permanent

Principal Software Engineer - Data Platform

San Francisco, CA (Remote Eligible - US Only)

$230K-$280K base + equity

Are you ready to lead the design and build of a world-class data platform from the ground up?

A high-growth, product-led tech company is looking for a Principal Software Engineer to lead the build-out of a modern, scalable data platform from the ground up. If you're excited about solving massive data challenges and shaping the infrastructure that supports real-time analytics and AI/ML at scale, this role is for you.

As the most senior technical IC on the Data Platform team, you'll partner with leadership across Engineering, Product, Security, and Compliance to design a low-latency, cloud-native data architecture using best-in-class tools like Kafka, Iceberg, ClickHouse, Tinybird, and Snowflake.

Why this role?

  • Join a growing Data Platform team
  • Own the technical vision and architecture end-to-end
  • Tackle petabyte-scale data challenges and real-time streaming use cases
  • Work with a cutting-edge tech stack (Kafka, Iceberg, ClickHouse, Snowflake, etc.)
  • Drive platform evolution to support AI/ML and company-wide analytics

What You'll Do

  • Design and build a next-gen data platform to power product and internal use cases
  • Architect for batch + streaming, scalability, fault tolerance, and low latency
  • Lead data modeling, warehousing, governance, and ingestion best practices
  • Champion engineering excellence and mentor senior engineers
  • Align technical decisions with long-term business strategy
  • Optimize for performance, cost, and resiliency in a modern cloud environment

What We're Looking For

  • 8+ years of experience in data engineering or platform architecture
  • 5+ years at the Principal Engineer level or equivalent
  • Deep expertise with Kafka (and its ecosystem), streaming data systems
  • Strong experience with ClickHouse, Iceberg, Snowflake, or similar tools
  • Cloud-native architecture expertise (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
  • Track record of designing data systems for compliance and governance
  • Experience scaling systems to support petabyte-level workloads
  • Excellent communication, collaboration, and leadership skills
  • Bonus: Experience enabling AI/ML platforms or preparing for IPO-scale growth

CONTACT

Joshua Poore

Associate Director

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