MQ
SeniorStaffSoftwareEngineer-DataPlatform
Neural analysis suggests this role is
optimal for Senior candidates.
“Senior Staff Software Engineer - Data Platform at MQ. Skills: Data platform, Lakehouse, Infrastructure, Python. Build and operate the data platform. Build infrastructure”
What You'll Achieve.
Improve reliability; Improve performance; Improve developer experience
Industry & Context.
Root cause analysis; Troubleshooting; Deep diving
Rotational on-call pager duty, Work from home
What They're Looking For.
Must Have
A career building data platforms, Production depth in modern lakehouse work, Mastery of Python, Credible depth in Go or Java, Track record of evolving live infrastructure, Ownership of major platform transitions, Influence as a working skill, History of growing other engineers
Nice to Have
Payments or fintech context, CDC tooling experience, Data governance tooling experience, Public technical writing, Open-source contributions
What You'll Do.
Build and operate the data platform
Own streaming ingestion
Set technical direction
Write production code
Build out lakehouse patterns
Build new abstractions
Harden production platform
Improve developer experience
Build vs buy analysis
Manage platform transitions
Build alignment across teams
Hold technical position
How You'll Work.
Team & Collaboration
Partner with Manager; Work with senior staff engineers; Partner with security; Partner with compliance; Partner with consumer teams
Communication Scope
Technical writing; Design docs; RFCs
Process & Methodology
Roadmap planning
Full Job Description
This is a software engineering role on a software engineering team. The team builds and operates the data platform: the infrastructure, abstractions, and SDKs that the rest of Marqeta's data and ML organization runs on. We are not writing pipelines–we are building the platform pipelines run on. If you've spent your career building infrastructure that other engineers depend on; and you know the difference between “software engineering” and "data engineering", read on. We work Flexible First. This role can be performed remotely anywhere within the United States or from our Oakland office. We’d love for you to join us! Learn more about our Product and Engineering team. At Marqeta, participation in a rotational on-call pager duty is a required part of the software engineering role. The specifics of the rotation may vary by team, depending on team size and structure, and will be discussed further during the interview process. What you'd own The lakehouse and the streaming ingestion that feeds it. Iceberg/Delta on S3, Spark/Glue processing, Kafka and CDC pipelines, the abstractions that let other teams land data, build pipelines, and publish datasets without inventing the patterns themselves. You’d help set the multi-year technical direction, design the golden paths, and ship the work — directly, with your hands on the code that matters. How the team works You’d report to the Director of Data Engineering and partner with a peer Manager whose scope is people leadership and operational delivery. You own technical direction, application architecture, and the engineering bar. You’ll work alongside other senior staff engineers across the broader data platform org, and partner with security, compliance, and the consumer teams who depend on what we ship. What "hands-on" actually means here Worth being specific, because “hands-on” means different things to different people: Yes: writing production code on the platform's hardest problems, owning the design and build of new abstrac
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