Data Platform Engineer

Job Description

About the Role

Data Platform Engineer

Location: Columbus San Mateo United States

Job Description:

The Data Platform Engineering team (Part of Upstart’s core platform vertical) provides developer tools, frameworks, and scalable data infrastructure as shared services across Upstart. The team’s primary objective is to provide Data Analysts, Software Engineers, and ML scientists access to high-quality data and developer tools to create business metrics for respective product verticals.

You will join the subdivision focusing on Data Curation.

As the Data Platform Engineer joining this team, you will get the opportunity to contribute to following areas:

Build and maintain user-friendly, scalable tools that enable data teams and other stakeholders to perform data transformations without needing deep technical expertise.

Expand the self-serve ETL and orchestration framework that developers use to build pipelines

Manage, organize, and maintain the data catalog to ensure efficient data discovery, governance, access control, and metadata management across the organization.

We would love to hear from you if you are passionate about building data products!

How you’ll make an impact:

Build and Improve the tools owned by the Data Curation team

Participate in planning and prioritization by collaborating with stakeholders across the various product verticals and functions (ML, Analytics, Finance, Software engineering) to ensure our tools/frameworks help deliver overall business objectives.

Collaborate with stakeholders such as Software Engineering, Machine Learning, Machine Learning Platform and Analytics teams to onboard them to the Lakehouse and adopt the developer tools

Participate in code reviews and architecture discussions to exchange actionable feedback with peers.

Help break down complex projects and requirements into stories for sprints.

Continuously monitor and improve data platform performance, reliability, and security.

Stay up-to-date with emerging technologies and industry best practices in data engineering.

Develop and maintain technical documentation for the data platform, including design, architecture, and operational procedures. Promote best practices for data engineering within the organization.

What we’re looking for:

Minimum requirements:

A bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, or a related field.

3+ years of experience in data platform development, data engineering or related fields

Proficiency in data engineering tech stack; Databricks / PostgreSQL / Python / Spark / Kafka / SQL / AWS / Airflow/ DBT / containers and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes) and others.

Ability to approach problems with first principles thinking, embrace ambiguity, and enjoy collaborative work on complex solutions.

Preferred qualifications:

Strong foundation in algorithms and data structures and their real-world use cases.

Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills, with the ability to analyze complex technical challenges and deliver effective solutions.

Experience and understanding of distributed systems, data architecture design, and big data technologies (e.g., Spark, Kafka, Lakehouse, Databricks).

Experience with AWS technologies ( e.g., AWS Lambda, Redshift, RDS, S3, etc.).

Good knowledge of DevOps engineering using Continuous Integration/Delivery tools like Kubernetes, Jenkins, Terraform, etc., thinking about automation, alerting, monitoring, security, and other declarative infrastructure.

Ability to explain complex concepts in easy-to-understand ways and navigate environments where problems are not well-defined (and evolve quickly).

Position Location – This role is available in the following locations: Remote, San Mateo, Columbus

Travel Requirements – This team has periodic on-site collaboration sessions twice or thrice a year. Upstart will cover all travel-related expenses if you need to travel to make these meetups.

What you’ll love:

Competitive Compensation (base + bonus & equity)

Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with Health Savings Account contributions from Upstart

401(k) with 100% company match up to $4,500 and immediate vesting and after-tax savings

Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP)

Life and disability insurance

Generous holiday, vacation, sick and safety leave

Supportive parental, family care, and military leave programs

Annual wellness, technology & ergonomic reimbursement programs

Social activities including team events and onsites, all-company updates, employee resource groups (ERGs), and other interest groups such as book clubs, fitness, investing, and volunteering

Catered lunches + snacks & drinks when working in offices

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