Principal Software Engineer - Data Platform San Francisco, CA (Remote Eligible - US Only) $230K-$280K base + equity Are you ready to lead the design and build of a world-class data platform from the ground up?
A high-growth, product-led tech company is looking for a Principal Software Engineer to lead the buildout of a modern, scalable data platform from the ground up. If you're excited about solving massive data challenges and shaping the infrastructure that supports real-time analytics and AI/ML at scale, this role is for you.
As the most senior technical IC on the Data Platform team, you'll partner with leadership across Engineering, Product, Security, and Compliance to design a low-latency, cloud-native data architecture using best-in-class tools like Kafka, Iceberg, ClickHouse, Tinybird, and Snowflake.
Why this role?- Join a growing Data Platform team
- Own the technical vision and architecture end-to-end
- Tackle petabyte-scale data challenges and real-time streaming use cases
- Work with a cutting-edge tech stack (Kafka, Iceberg, ClickHouse, Snowflake, etc.)
- Drive platform evolution to support AI/ML and company-wide analytics
What You'll Do- Design and build a next-gen data platform to power product and internal use cases
- Architect for batch + streaming, scalability, fault tolerance, and low latency
- Lead data modeling, warehousing, governance, and ingestion best practices
- Champion engineering excellence and mentor senior engineers
- Align technical decisions with long-term business strategy
- Optimize for performance, cost, and resiliency in a modern cloud environment
What We're Looking For- 8+ years of experience in data engineering or platform architecture
- 5+ years at the Principal Engineer level or equivalent
- Deep expertise with Kafka (and its ecosystem), streaming data systems
- Strong experience with ClickHouse, Iceberg, Snowflake, or similar tools
- Cloud-native architecture expertise (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
- Track record of designing data systems for compliance and governance
- Experience scaling systems to support petabyte-level workloads
- Excellent communication, collaboration, and leadership skills
- Bonus: Experience enabling AI/ML platforms or preparing for IPO-scale growth