Principal Data Engineer – Technical Lead

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

📋 Description

• Serve as a player-coach, offering technical leadership, architectural insight, and daily mentorship to a dedicated team of 3–5 engineers. Conduct thorough code reviews and promote professional development within your team.

• Design and implement advanced Data Access Layers (DAL) and custom ODMs to convert platform-generated, SQL-like queries into high-performance MongoDB BSON operations and aggregation pipelines.

• Develop and maintain middleware that guarantees Unqork’s core business logic remains independent of storage solutions, fostering modularity and flexibility across various data storage systems.

• Architect and scale a multi-tenant, secure MongoDB environment. Lead initiatives to ensure high availability while performing in-depth execution plan analysis (IXSCAN vs. COLLSCAN) to enhance query performance.

• Plan and design hybrid data architectures to accommodate operational, transactional, and analytical schema and database systems.

• Utilize Node.js and JavaScript to create robust microservices (typically GraphQL) and internal libraries that incorporate dynamic, metadata-driven data patterns into the Unqork no-code runtime.

• Create schemas and declarative models that empower non-technical users to construct complex application logic without sacrificing data integrity or system performance.

• Design real-time and batch data pipelines using Apache Kafka and Spark to facilitate data transformation and movement between relational and NoSQL systems.

• Collaborate with Platform and Backend engineers to standardize data interaction patterns, ensuring high-scale, API-driven performance across the entire enterprise cloud.

• Work closely with the Product Management team to shape the product roadmap, translate business needs into technical specifications, and ensure alignment between product objectives and engineering efforts.

⛳️ Requirements

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science; a Master’s degree or higher is preferred.

• Over 10 years of experience in backend, data, or platform engineering, demonstrating a successful history of addressing complex latency and implementation issues for systems serving millions of users.

• At least 2 years of experience in a Technical Lead or Player-Coach role, with proven success in managing, mentoring, and guiding a small team of engineers while remaining actively involved in the codebase.

• Extensive, hands-on expertise with SQL database systems (PostgreSQL), search systems (e.g., Elastic), and with MongoDB/Atlas, including complex aggregation pipelines, BSON data modeling, sharding, replica sets, and advanced query performance optimization.

• Strong experience in building Data Access Layers (DAL), custom ODMs, or query translation engines that effectively decouple application logic from underlying storage systems.

• High proficiency in Node.js or other major backend languages (Python, Java, or Go) to construct high-scale, event-driven architectures.

• Direct experience with implementing Redis (caching/TTL strategies) and Atlas Search (Lucene) to enhance data retrieval and discovery.

• Advanced knowledge of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and distributed systems, including familiarity with containerization (Docker/Kubernetes).

• Understanding of SQL-to-NoSQL translation patterns and a background in developing internal developer platforms or metadata-driven systems (e.g., no-code/low-code).

• An AI-forward mindset: A keen user of AI tools, passionate about exploring how AI can automate workflows, boost creativity, and amplify personal impact.

🏝️ Benefits

• 💻 Work from home with a remote-first community

• 🏝 Unlimited PTO (and the encouragement to use it)

• 📝 Student loan payback program

• 🏥 100% employer-covered medical, dental, and vision options available for you and your dependents

• 💸 Flexible Spending Account (FSA)

• 🏠 Monthly stipend towards your WFH setup, vacation, development, and more

• 💰 Employer-sponsored 401(k) with contribution match

• 🏋🏻‍♀️ Subsidized ClassPass Membership

• 🍼 Generous Paid Parental Leave