Sr Staff Software Engineer- Data Platform

About Us

As a Sr. Staff Data Platform Engineer, you will be the primary architect and visionary for the core data infrastructure that powers the entire enterprise. This is a "platform-as-a-product" role; your mission is to build the internal foundation—creating the high-performance engines, abstraction layers, and self-service frameworks that enable hundreds of other engineers to move faster.

You will operate at the intersection of Systems Programming and Data Engineering, solving "hard-tech" problems like automated schema evolution, multi-engine compute optimization, and global data discovery. As a top-level technical individual contributor, you will bridge the gap between long-term business strategy and deep-kernel technical execution, ensuring WEX’s data platform remains a competitive advantage.

Is this role for you?

• YES, if: You are a Backend/Software Engineer who loves solving "Big Data" problems, building APIs for data discovery, and optimizing distributed systems.

• NO, if: Your primary expertise is writing SQL queries, building Tableau dashboards, or managing ETL workflows without deep experience in Java or Python system architecture.

Responsibilities

• Architectural Sovereignty: Define the 3-5 year technical roadmap for the Data Lakehouse. You aren't just using tools; you are deciding how storage, compute, and metadata layers (e.g., Apache Iceberg, Snowflake Horizon or Databricks Unity Catalog) interact at an elemental level.

• Platform-as-a-Product: Build internal SDKs, CLI tools, and automated orchestration frameworks. Your goal is to abstract away cloud complexity via Control Planes and Custom Operators, allowing Data Engineers to focus on business logic rather than infrastructure boilerplate.

• Internal R&D: Prototype and benchmark emerging technologies (e.g., specialized Spark extensions) to keep the platform at the bleeding edge of performance and cost-efficiency.

• Global Governance & Security: Architect "compliance-by-design" systems. Automate data lineage, PII masking, and fine-grained access control across petabyte-scale environments without sacrificing developer velocity.

• AI Governance Lake: Facilitate real-time data ingestion by implementing streaming support for Open Telemetry data from AI Agents into the Data Lake, drive the development of advanced AI evaluation metrics and reporting.

• Engineering Excellence & Influence: Set the gold standard for code quality and system design across the company. You will lead Cross-Functional Architecture Reviews and serve as the final escalation point for the most complex system outages or performance bottlenecks.

• Organizational Mentorship: Beyond individual mentoring, you will foster an "Engineering Community," influencing the hiring bar and professional development paths for the entire data engineering organization.