Staff Data Platform Engineer Jobs

Staff Data Platform Engineer

From $20/yr

KAYAK, part of Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG), is a leading travel search engine. With billions of queries across our platforms, we help people find their perfect flight, stay, rental car and vacation package. We're also transforming business travel with a new corporate travel solution, KAYAK for Business. As an employee of KAYAK, you will be part of a travel company that operates a portfolio of global metasearch brands including momondo, Cheapflights and HotelsCombined, among others. From start-up to industry leader, innovation is in our DNA and every employee has an opportunity to make their mark. Our focus is on building the best travel search engine leveraging AI and data to make it easier for everyone to experience the world. We are looking for a Staff Data Platform Engineer to join our Data Platform team. Our team builds and operates the shared foundation that powers analytics, machine learning, business intelligence and AI-driven experiences across the entire company. As a senior individual contributor, you will shape how we move, store, govern, and serve data at scale, enabling every downstream team to build faster and with greater confidence. If you enjoy turning ambiguity into clear technical direction and durable solutions, we’d love to hear from you. This role will be required to work from our Berlin office 3 days per week. In This Role, You Will * Design and evolve the architecture of KAYAK’s shared Data Platform, including near-real-time streaming, lakehouse storage, schema management, semantic layer, and distributed query infrastructure. Make thoughtful trade-offs between latency, correctness, cost, and long-term maintainability. * Deliver high-impact platform initiatives end-to-end — from problem framing and architecture design through implementation, rollout, and operational handoff. * Define and promote technical standards for data contracts, schema evolution, ingestion patterns, and production readiness across platform and domain teams. * Lead high-impact platform initiatives from problem framing and architecture design through implementation, rollout, and operational handoff. * Develop reusable patterns and reference architectures for streaming ingestion, compaction, retention, schema governance, observability, and other recurring data engineering challenges. * Establish reliable observability across the platform, including pipeline monitoring, consumer lag tracking, data quality checks, and alerting. * Collaborate closely with Operations, Security, Engineering, Data Engineering, and Data Science, and Analytics to evolve the platform, build cross-functional support, and ensure the platform meets the needs of its users. * Drive the semantic layer and metadata strategy that supports consistent and trusted self-service analytics and AI-driven data access. * Evaluate technologies and approaches across streaming, storage, query, orchestration, and cloud infrastructure, balancing scalability, operational complexity, cost, and maintainability. * Coach and mentor engineers through design reviews, code reviews, pairing, and reusable technical guidance. * Own the most complex architectural and operational challenges on the data platform, including failure recovery, schema drift, partition management, and performance degradation. Please Apply If You Have * 7+ years of professional experience in data engineering, with meaningful time spent at a senior or staff level with domain-wide technical scope. * Experience designing and operating lakehouse architectures at scale — including open table formats (e.g., Apache Iceberg), columnar storage (Parquet) and cloud object storage (e.g. S3) * Experience building and operating streaming data pipelines — including event-driven ingestion, exactly-once delivery semantics, consumer lag management, checkpoint and recovery strategies, and failure handling in production environments. * Hands-on experience with data contracts, data governance, metadata, or semantic-layer systems. * Strong Python skills and a track record of writing maintainable, testable production code. * Experience deploying and operating data workloads on Kubernetes — including managing containerized infrastructure, resource tuning and health checks. * Proven ability to influence multiple teams, communicate architectural trade-offs, and drive adoption. * Experience mentoring engineers and raising technical standards through code reviews, documentation, and reusable patterns. * Comfort taking ownership of broad, ambiguous problem spaces. To Stand Out * Distributed query engines such as Trino. * Experience with Kafka, Flink, or comparable streaming technologies. * Workflow orchestration tools such as Apache Airflow. * Experience with AWS or an equivalent public cloud provider. * CI/CD and deployment automation (e.g., GitHub Actions). * Working knowledge of Java or another JVM-based language, given the JVM-based nature of several frameworks in this domain. Benefits And Perks * Work from (almost) anywhere for up to 20 days per year * Focus on mental health and well-being: + Company-paid therapy sessions through SpringHealth + Company-paid subscription to HeadSpace + Company-wide week off a year – the whole team fully recharges (and returns without a pile-up of work!) + No meeting Fridays * Paid parental leave * Paid volunteer time * Focus on your career growth: + Development Dollars + Leadership development + Access to thousands of on-demand e-learnings * Travel Discounts * Employee Resource Groups * 6 weeks paid vacation + a day off for your birthday * Free lunch 2 days per week * Pension plan contributions * Public transportation subsidies * Bike leasing program * Monthly social events, Thursday happy hours, sports teams * An awesome office in Friedrichshain, Berlin Inclusion At KAYAK, we want everyone to have the space to grow, share ideas and do great work. That's why we're focused on hiring the best talent from all walks of life and experiences, supporting them well and making sure no one feels like they have to fit a mold to belong here. Need any adjustments for the interview, application or on the job? No problem – just give us a heads-up. We've got you.

Senior / Staff Data Engineer | AI, Data Platforms & Data Products

Accountabilities Design, build, and evolve modern cloud-based data infrastructure and scalable data platforms from the ground up. Develop reliable data pipelines, distributed systems, and event-driven architectures that support business-critical applications and products. Work across technologies such as AWS, Snowflake, Databricks, Spark, Airflow, and dbt to create robust and maintainable data solutions. Develop AI-enabled data capabilities, including LLM-powered workflows, agentic data solutions, semantic layers, and natural-language analytics experiences. Build self-service analytics platforms and customer-facing or embedded data products that improve product adoption, customer experience, and commercial performance. Address complex challenges involving data streaming, governance, metadata management, and knowledge systems. Evaluate emerging technologies and identify opportunities to improve the data platform as the AI and data ecosystem evolves. Own systems throughout their lifecycle, including deployment, production reliability, observability, performance monitoring, incident response, and on-call support. Define architectural direction, establish engineering standards, and make informed technical decisions that support long-term scalability. Collaborate with technical leadership and cross-functional teams to identify high-impact problems, prioritize solutions, and connect engineering investments to business outcomes. Mentor other engineers, share technical expertise, and help establish and grow the data engineering function. Requirements At least 5 years of professional engineering experience, with demonstrated achievements and technical ownership valued more highly than tenure alone. Proven experience building data infrastructure, platforms, or data products from scratch, ideally as an early engineering hire or within a startup or scale-up environment. Strong foundations in distributed systems, platform engineering, software engineering, or modern data engineering. Hands-on experience with cloud infrastructure, particularly AWS or an equivalent cloud platform. Familiarity with modern data technologies such as Snowflake, Databricks, Spark, Airflow, and dbt. Experience designing streaming or event-driven architectures and building scalable, reliable production systems. Demonstrated ownership of production environments, including monitoring, observability, troubleshooting, incident response, and on-call responsibilities. Experience with AI and large language models in data platforms, including AI-assisted analytics, semantic layers, AI data assistants, or natural-language interfaces, is highly desirable. Experience developing self-service analytics capabilities, embedded analytics, or customer-facing data products. A track record of delivering measurable technical or commercial impact, such as generating revenue, reducing costs, improving customer experience, or increasing operational efficiency. For Staff-level candidates, the ability to lead architecture decisions, influence technical direction, establish engineering practices, and mentor other engineers. Strong product thinking, commercial awareness, analytical problem-solving skills, and the ability to communicate and justify complex technical decisions. Comfortable operating autonomously in ambiguous environments, identifying important problems, designing solutions, and taking responsibility for outcomes from conception through production. A background in software engineering, data engineering, machine learning, or quantitative disciplines may be particularly relevant. Work authorization: Must already have unrestricted authorization to work in Canada. Visa sponsorship and visa transfer are not available. Benefits Competitive salary aligned with experience and seniority; the specific salary range has not been disclosed. Equity participation , offering an opportunity to share in the company’s growth. Fully remote work for eligible candidates based in Canada. Significant ownership and influence over data platform architecture, engineering strategy, and AI-powered product development. The opportunity to help establish and shape a growing data engineering function rather than simply maintain an existing platform. Exposure to complex technical challenges spanning cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, AI, analytics, and customer-facing data products. Direct collaboration with experienced technical leadership and the opportunity to influence high-impact business decisions. An environment that values autonomy, experimentation, innovation, and measurable outcomes. Healthcare coverage, paid leave, retirement benefits, and other specific employment perks were not detailed in the provided job description. How Jobgether works: We use an AI-powered matching process to ensure your application is reviewed quickly, objectively, and fairly against the role's core requirements. Our system identifies the top-fitting candidates, and this shortlist is then shared directly with the hiring company. The final decision and next steps (interviews, assessments) are managed by their internal team. We appreciate your interest and wish you the best! Why Apply Through Jobgether? Data Privacy Notice: By submitting your application, you acknowledge that Jobgether will process your personal data to evaluate your candidacy and share relevant information with the hiring employer. This processing is based on legitimate interest and pre-contractual measures under applicable data protection laws (including GDPR). You may exercise your rights (access, rectification, erasure, objection) at any time. #LI-CL1

Staff Software Engineer - Data Platform

From $39/yr

<p>Toast creates technology to help restaurants and local businesses succeed in a digital world, helping business owners operate, increase sales, engage customers, and keep employees happy.&nbsp;</p> <p>We are hiring a Staff Software Engineer to join our data platform (AAP) team in Dublin. The AAP team owns the foundational data infrastructure that powers Toast's analytics products and AI/ML capabilities: real-time streaming pipelines, a cloud-native data lakehouse, feature serving for ML-driven product experiences, and the infrastructure that enables product teams across Toast to build intelligent, data-driven experiences for our 170,000+ restaurant customers.</p> <p>We are in the middle of a significant platform evolution: migrating to Apache Iceberg, standing up a new Feature Store, conducting Databricks evaluations, and scaling our streaming infrastructure to meet the demands of a rapidly growing business.</p> <p>As a Staff Software Engineer, you'll be the technical lead for major parts of this evolution. You'll design and lead the delivery of platform capabilities that several teams depend on, doing deep hands-on work and making design calls that account for streaming, storage, serving, and the teams consuming them. You'll be the go-to expert in your area of the platform, working with product and engineering partners inside and outside our line of business. You'll make the engineers around you better through mentorship, design reviews, and the example you set. Success looks like other engineering teams moving faster because of the platform you help build.</p> <p><strong>A day in the life (Responsibilities)</strong></p> <ul> <li>Lead the delivery of significant data platform capabilities, from early design through production rollout, across the AAP team and the teams that depend on it</li> <li>Work hands-on with Kotlin/Java, Spark, Iceberg, and our streaming infrastructure, diagnosing performance, reasoning through trade-offs, and writing the code that sets the pattern for others</li> </ul> <ul> <li>Anticipate how requirements will change and design systems that can absorb that change, exploring the problem fully before settling on a solution</li> <li>Evolve the platform's API surfaces so that engineers across Toast can self-service - adoption and ease-of-use are part of the job</li> <li>Lead efforts that measurably improve platform quality, reliability, and observability for the teams and customers who depend on it</li> <li>Mentor other engineers and raise the bar on engineering practices across the organisation</li> <li>Use AI tooling as a genuine force multiplier in your day-to-day work and help the team do the same</li> </ul> <p><strong>What you'll need to thrive (Requirements)</strong></p> <ul> <li>5+ years in software engineering with a strong focus on data platforms or distributed systems, including technical leadership of projects involving more than one team</li> <li>Proficiency in Java, Kotlin or other object-oriented language</li> <li>Strong hands-on expertise in Apache Spark and Apache Iceberg (or similar)</li> <li>Experience with streaming infrastructure (Apache Kafka, Apache Pulsar, or similar) and cloud-native data platforms on AWS</li> <li>Experience building internal platforms and developer-facing abstractions - you think about your platform's users as carefully as product engineers think about end users</li> </ul> <ul> <li>Databricks experience is a bonus but we care more that you understand what's running underneath it</li> </ul> <p><strong>This is a hybrid role requiring in-office collaboration two days per week in our <a href="https://careers.toasttab.com/ireland">Dublin office.</a></strong></p> <p><strong>Our tech stack</strong></p> <p>Our data platform runs on AWS and spans Apache Iceberg for table format and lakehouse architecture, Apache Kafka and Pulsar for real-time streaming, Apache Spark for data processing, and DynamoDB and Postgres for operational data stores. We are migrating from legacy ETL patterns toward a modern, cloud-native data lakehouse and building out Feature Store capabilities to power ML-driven product experiences. Our backend services are primarily Kotlin and Java.</p> <p data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><strong>AI at Toast</strong></p> <p>At Toast, one of our company values is that we're hungry to build and learn. We believe learning new AI tools empowers us to build for our customers faster, more independently, and with higher quality. We provide these tools across all disciplines, from Engineering and Product to Sales and Support, and are inspired by how our Toasters are already driving real value with them. The people who thrive here are those who embrace changes that let us build more for our customers; it’s a core part of our culture.</p> <p data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><strong>Our Total Rewards Philosophy&nbsp;<br></strong>We strive to provide competitive compensation and benefits programs that help to attract, retain, and motivate the best and brightest people in our industry. Our total rewards package goes beyond great earnings potential and provides the means to a healthy lifestyle with the flexibility to meet Toasters’ changing needs. Learn more about our benefits at&nbsp;<a class="c-link" href="https://careers.toasttab.com/toast-benefits" target="blank" data-stringify-link="https://careers.toasttab.com/toast-benefits" data-sk="tooltipparent" data-remove-tab-index="true">https://careers.toasttab.com/toast-benefits</a>.</p><div class="content-conclusion"><p><strong>How Toast Uses AI in its Hiring Process</strong></p> <p data-pm-slice="1 1 []">Throughout the hiring process, our goal is to get to know you. We use AI tools to support our recruiters and interviewers with tasks like note-taking, summarization, and documentation of interviews to ensure they can be fully focused on your conversation. All hiring decisions are made by people. We ask that you complete interviews and assessments on your own, without real-time AI tools, recording, or transcription bots, unless we tell you otherwise in advance. To learn more: <a class="ProsemirrorEditor-link" href="https://careers.toasttab.com/ai-in-hiring">https://careers.toasttab.com/ai-in-hiring</a></p> <p><strong>Our Approach to Hybrid Working</strong><br><br>We embrace a hybrid work model that fosters in-person collaboration while valuing individual needs. Our goal is to build a strong culture of connection as we work together to empower the hospitality community, regardless of location. Please visit the Locations page on our career site to learn more about our in-office expectations by region:&nbsp;<a class="ProsemirrorEditor-link" href="https://careers.toasttab.com/locations-toast">https://careers.toasttab.com/locations-toast</a></p> <p><strong>People Are the Secret Ingredient in Our Recipe for Success</strong></p> <p>At Toast, our employees are our secret ingredient—when they thrive, we thrive. The restaurant industry brings together people with a wide range of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives, and we value that same breadth at Toast. We strive to build a culture grounded in authenticity, respect, and humility, where every Toaster has a real opportunity to grow, contribute, and do their best work—raising the bar in delivering exceptional experiences for our customers and each other.</p> <p><strong>Apply today!</strong></p> <p>Toast is committed to creating an accessible and inclusive hiring process. As part of this commitment, we strive to provide reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities to enable them to access the hiring process. If you need an accommodation to access the job application or interview process, please contact <a href="mailto:candidateaccommodations@toasttab.com">candidateaccommodations@toasttab.com</a>.</p> <p><em>------</em></p> <p><em>For roles in the United States, it is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.</em></p></div>