Staff Data Engineer

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  Architect the platform. Set our warehouse/lakehouse direction and stand up the data lake and layered architecture that turns our raw system of record into trustworthy, queryable, intelligence-ready data.

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  Build the pipelines. Design and run batch and streaming pipelines that move data reliably out of our production systems - CDC, ELT, and real-time where it matters.

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  Model the data. Define the canonical datasets and models the whole company depends on, getting the grain, semantics, and contracts right.

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  Own reliability and accuracy. This is financial data, so correctness is non-negotiable. You'll own data quality, observability, integrity checks, and the testing and monitoring that let us trust it.

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  Build for a regulated environment. Design in role-based access, masking, lineage, and auditability from day one, and keep sensitive financial data out of places it doesn't belong.

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  Enable AI/ML and analytics. Build the feature pipelines and trustworthy data foundation our intelligence work relies on, moving us from systems of record toward systems of intelligence and action.

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  Set the standard. Establish the practices, tooling, and CI/CD for data that the future team inherits. You're setting the bar, not just clearing it.

We're looking for someone who meets the minimum requirements below. If you meet them, we encourage you to apply. Your skills and trajectory matter more than checking every box.

• 8+ years building production data systems, with a track record of owning architecture and seeing big decisions through to production.

• Expert SQL and strong Python.

• Deep experience in at least one modern lakehouse/warehouse ecosystem - for example Snowflake with dbt and Fivetran, or Databricks with Spark, Delta Lake, and Unity Catalog. We care that you've gone deep somewhere and can reason from first principles across stacks, not that you've used a specific product.

• Strong data modeling skills - dimensional, normalized, or Data Vault - and a sense for designing models that age well.

• Experience with pipeline orchestration (Airflow, Dagster, Prefect, or equivalent) and large-scale processing (such as Spark).

• Production experience on a major cloud (AWS, GCP, or Azure), including security and cost patterns.

• Experience working with sensitive or regulated data - access controls, encryption, governance, and an instinct for keeping the blast radius of mistakes small.

• A high technical bar set through influence and example. You make the work and the people around you better, and you're as comfortable in the codebase as you are in a design review.

• Payments, fintech, or other regulated-domain experience, including familiarity with PCI DSS and tokenization/vaulting patterns.

• Streaming infrastructure (Kafka, Kinesis, Flink).

• Data governance, lineage, and observability tooling (Unity Catalog, Snowflake Horizon, Monte Carlo, Great Expectations, OpenLineage).

• Experience supporting ML/AI workloads - feature stores, training/inference pipelines, MLflow.

• An interest in growing into people leadership as the function scales. We expect technical leadership from this role from the start; whether you want to manage a team down the road is genuinely up to you, and there's a clear path if you do.

At Payabli, you'll have a front row seat into building a high-growth venture backed fintech company. As a senior leader in Operations, you'll shape how the organization scales and be the driving force behind our AI-first operations strategy — directly influencing how we build, automate, and optimize for the future. You'll stretch yourself every day, learn a ton, grow alongside the company, and have a lot of fun building Payabli with us. We're a values driven company that cares deeply about our team, partners, and customers. Our north star values are:

• Competitive salary

• Stock options with the potential to unlock more equity as we grow

• Flexible PTO and paid parental leave

• Medical, dental, & vision insurance

• 401K, HSA, pre-tax savings programs

Payabli is an equal opportunity employer and values a diverse, inclusive workplace.

Principals only. No external agency submissions. Candidates must apply directly; We will not accept submissions from third-party recruiters or staffing agencies.