Principal Software Engineer, Tech Lead – Platform

Cardlytics

Principal Software Engineer leading the evolution of data compute architecture at Cardlytics. Focused on AI-ready data platforms and serving diverse analysts and engineers.

Posted 7/20/2026full-timeRemote • 🇺🇸 United StatesSeniorWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

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Demonstrates expertise in designing and implementing Lakehouse architectures, managing data governance, and ensuring cloud security best practices. Proficient in mentoring teams and driving engineering excellence while facilitating self-service access to data for diverse stakeholders.

Highest-signal resume keywords

Lakehouse Architecture DesignDatabricksAWS EMRTerraformData Governance

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills

Data EngineeringELT/ETL Pipeline DevelopmentSQLSpark (PySpark)Data Modeling

Soft Skills

Excellent CommunicationCollaboration SkillsStakeholder Engagement

Tools & Technologies

Delta LakeUnity CatalogGitHub ActionsIncident ResponsePerformance Tuning

Industry Keywords

Cloud SecurityInfrastructure as CodeCompute ManagementData LineageMetadata Management

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AWSCloudETLPySparkSparkSQLTerraformUnity

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Design and evolve the Cardlytics next-generation architecture; establish reference architectures and standards for batch, streaming, ML, and AI/agentic workloads
Build out the semantic layer, feature store, and data ontology that make Cardlytics data consumable by AI/agentic applications; enable governed, self-service access for both human and machine (LLM/agent) consumers
Serve as the primary technical partner for analysts, engineers, and business users; develop self-service guides, onboarding materials, and best-practice documentation to reduce friction across all user groups
Set technical direction for the platform and mentor engineers across the data and platform teams; drive engineering excellence and best practices, and manage the vendor relationship
Define monitoring standards and SLAs, lead performance tuning for Spark jobs, open table formats (e.g. Delta, Hudi), and SQL query engines; own incident response and root-cause analysis
Drive adoption of a unified governance layer (e.g., Databricks Unity Catalog) for centralized RBAC, column-level security, data lineage, and metadata management; implement and maintain security best practices including encryption and audit logging
Define the operating model and guardrails for the managed lakehouse platforms (including Databricks on AWS) — compute policies, access model, catalog structure, and cost governance — with day-to-day administration executed by the platform and domain teams working within those standards
Own the CI/CD strategy for lakehouse and data platform deployments (Terraform, GitHub Actions, and platform-native packaging such as Asset Bundles); enforce DevOps practices across engineering teams

Requirements

What you’ll need

7+ years of experience in data engineering or data platform roles, with at least 2 years in a technical lead or architecture capacity
Deep, hands-on expertise with the leading industry platforms, frameworks, and tools: Databricks, AWS EMR or similar, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Spark (PySpark), and SQL; with a solid understanding of compute/cluster management on AWS
Proven experience designing and delivering Lakehouse architectures and large-scale ELT/ETL pipelines in production environments
Proficiency in Infrastructure as Code tools, such as Terraform
Demonstrated experience supporting diverse stakeholder groups including analysts, engineers (including ML engineers), and non-technical business users
Strong understanding of data governance, data modeling, and cloud security best practices
Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to translate technical concepts for non-technical audiences.

Benefits

Comp & perks

Flexible paid time off plus company holidays
Medical, dental, and vision insurance begins on your first day
401(k) retirement plan with company match, plan also includes a student loan debt repayment option
Employee Stock Purchase Plan
Educational assistance for continuing education
Lifestyle Spending Account for physical, emotional, and financial wellness (like gym memberships, home down payments, art classes, park passes, and more!)
Complimentary Calm app subscriptions to support employee mental health and wellbeing