Staff Data Engineer

Payabli

Founding Data Engineer at Payabli developing data systems and pipelines for payments infrastructure. Owner of data reliability and architecture decisions critical to the platform's analytics and ML efforts.

Posted 6/27/2026full-timeRemote • 🇺🇸 United StatesLeadWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AirflowAWSAzureCloudGoogle Cloud PlatformPythonSparkSQLUnityVault

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Architect the platform. Set our warehouse/lakehouse direction and stand up the data lake and layered architecture that turns our raw system of record into trustworthy, queryable, intelligence-ready data.
Build the pipelines. Design and run batch and streaming pipelines that move data reliably out of our production systems - CDC, ELT, and real-time where it matters.
Model the data. Define the canonical datasets and models the whole company depends on, getting the grain, semantics, and contracts right.
Own reliability and accuracy. This is financial data, so correctness is non-negotiable. You'll own data quality, observability, integrity checks, and the testing and monitoring that let us trust it.
Build for a regulated environment. Design in role-based access, masking, lineage, and auditability from day one, and keep sensitive financial data out of places it doesn't belong.
Enable AI/ML and analytics. Build the feature pipelines and trustworthy data foundation our intelligence work relies on, moving us from systems of record toward systems of intelligence and action.
Set the standard. Establish the practices, tooling, and CI/CD for data that the future team inherits. You're setting the bar, not just clearing it.

Requirements

What you’ll need

8+ years building production data systems, with a track record of owning architecture and seeing big decisions through to production.
Expert SQL and strong Python.
Deep experience in at least one modern lakehouse/warehouse ecosystem - for example Snowflake with dbt and Fivetran, or Databricks with Spark, Delta Lake, and Unity Catalog. We care that you've gone deep somewhere and can reason from first principles across stacks, not that you've used a specific product.
Strong data modeling skills - dimensional, normalized, or Data Vault - and a sense for designing models that age well.
Experience with pipeline orchestration (Airflow, Dagster, Prefect, or equivalent) and large-scale processing (such as Spark).
Production experience on a major cloud (AWS, GCP, or Azure), including security and cost patterns.
Experience working with sensitive or regulated data - access controls, encryption, governance, and an instinct for keeping the blast radius of mistakes small.
A high technical bar set through influence and example. You make the work and the people around you better, and you're as comfortable in the codebase as you are in a design review.

Benefits

Comp & perks

Competitive salary
Stock options with the potential to unlock more equity as we grow
Flexible PTO and paid parental leave
Medical, dental, & vision insurance
401K, HSA, pre-tax savings programs

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

SQLPythondata modelingdimensional modelingnormalized modelingData Vaultpipeline orchestrationlarge-scale processingcloud computingdata quality

Soft Skills

leadershipinfluencecommunicationproblem-solvingattention to detailcollaborationdesign reviewmentorshiporganizational skillscritical thinking