Lead Data Platform Engineer

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States.

📋 Description

• Take charge of the technical strategy, architecture, development, and reliability of a shared enterprise data and analytics platform.

• Act as the ultimate technical authority and escalation point for the team.

• Lead the hands-on design and implementation of both streaming and batch data pipelines for real-time and historical analytics.

• Develop production infrastructure-as-code utilizing CDK/TypeScript.

• Create curated and governed analytical data products to ensure consistent and reliable reporting and decision-making.

• Guarantee scalability, performance, availability, reliability, cost-effectiveness, and safe recovery from retries and failures.

• Establish data contracts with contributing teams that address schemas, data quality, service levels, and change management.

• Integrate security, access controls, lineage, classification, auditability, monitoring, and operational readiness into the platform.

• Collaborate with domain, product, operations, security, and governance stakeholders.

• Conduct code and design reviews, establish coding standards, mentor engineers, and advocate for robust data engineering and platform reliability practices.

• Implement and uphold responsible AI-assisted coding practices and guardrails.

• Respond to incidents and promote platform reliability.

• Assess emerging tools and architectural patterns, offering recommendations for enhancements.

⛳️ Requirements

• Proven, hands-on coding proficiency in TypeScript and/or JavaScript with AWS CDK is essential.

• Demonstrated experience in directing the technical strategy and architecture of a scalable cloud data platform in a production environment.

• Familiarity with technologies such as Kinesis, Data Firehose, Flink, Lambda, EventBridge, SNS/SQS, Redshift, Athena, Glue, EMR, S3, DynamoDB, or similar tools.

• Strong background in analytical data modeling and the development of curated, layered data architectures.

• Experience using monitoring and observability tools like CloudWatch, Grafana, InfluxDB, or comparable alternatives.

• Proven ability to design for scalability, performance, cost efficiency, data integrity, and secure recovery from retries or failures.

• Practical debugging experience with out-of-order processing, duplicate delivery, or hot partitions.

• Experience in establishing data contracts and implementing schema evolution, data quality, access control, classification, lineage, and auditability practices.

• Ability to set responsible AI coding-tool guardrails and review standards.

• Demonstrated success in mentoring engineers, leading code and design reviews, serving as an escalation point, and communicating effectively with both technical and non-technical teams.

• A passion for enhancing educational and career opportunities and engaging in mission-driven work.

• Curiosity and enthusiasm for emerging technologies and AI-driven solutions.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills that are clear and concise.

• A learner's mindset and a commitment to personal and professional growth.

• A strong drive for impact and excellence.

• A collaborative and empathetic approach to teamwork.

• Authorization to work in the United States.

• Preferable but not mandatory: Experience with SaaS/multi-tenant or cell-based architecture, DuckDB, ML/AI-enabled analytics tools, regulated/high-governance data environments, hiring or expanding a data team, presenting technical roadmaps to non-technical stakeholders, multi-account AWS at an organizational scale, or familiarity with education technology.

🏝️ Benefits

• Option for fully remote work.

• Hybrid work possibility for candidates located near College Board offices (in-office on Tuesday and Wednesday).

• Occasional travel for in-person business meetings.

• Comprehensive compensation package.

• Fair and competitive salary offerings.

• Location-adjusted salary structures.

• Supportive team environment and meaningful career advancement opportunities.

• Open and transparent discussions regarding compensation and benefits throughout the hiring process.