Staff Data Engineer

Role Description

As a Staff Data Engineer at Datavant, you will lead the design and build of our next-generation patient data platform, developing the distributed data systems and platform capabilities that power secure, scalable, and intelligent use of data across a multi-tenant, multi-cloud environment. This is a hands-on technical leadership role for a software-oriented data engineer who combines strong architectural judgment with deep implementation expertise. You will define how complex data is processed, validated, and served—supporting analytics, product, and AI-driven use cases in a regulated environment.

What You Will Do:

• Lead the architecture and development of core data platform capabilities, including processing frameworks, storage patterns, and shared services
• Design and implement multi-tenant, multi-cloud data systems with strong isolation, scalability, and operational durability
• Build and operate large-scale distributed data processing systems across batch and real-time workloads
• Define and evolve data lifecycle patterns, including ingestion, validation, transformation, enrichment, and serving
• Establish data quality gates and validation frameworks to ensure trust, consistency, and auditability
• Design systems that integrate with platform infrastructure, including CI/CD, deployment orchestration, observability, and infrastructure automation
• Make sound architectural decisions across performance, cost, reliability, and maintainability tradeoffs
• Lead ambiguous, high-impact initiatives where both problem definition and solution design require ownership
• Contribute significantly to production code, setting standards for quality, testing, and operability

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience building data-intensive or distributed systems, with a strong software engineering foundation
• Proven experience designing and operating large-scale data platforms in production
• Deep expertise in distributed data processing systems (e.g., Spark or similar big data technologies)
• Strong software engineering fundamentals, including system design, testing, CI/CD, and production debugging
• Experience building systems in cloud environments (AWS preferred), including storage, compute, and security patterns
• Experience designing multi-tenant systems, with a focus on isolation, scalability, and reliability
• Strong understanding of data modeling, pipeline design, and data quality enforcement
• Ability to navigate ambiguity, evaluate tradeoffs, and drive durable technical decisions
• Track record of being a high-impact, hands-on contributor who leads through both design and execution

Requirements

• Strong candidates will have experience with several of the following:
• Distributed data processing frameworks (e.g., Spark, Flink, or similar)
• Cloud data platforms (e.g., Databricks, Snowflake, or equivalent)
• Data transformation and modeling frameworks (dbt or equivalent)
• Workflow orchestration systems (e.g., Airflow or similar)
• Streaming and event-driven systems (e.g., Kafka or equivalent)
• Infrastructure-as-code (e.g., Terraform)
• Modern table formats and lakehouse architectures (e.g., Iceberg, Delta, or similar)

Benefits

• The estimated total cash compensation range for this role is: $190,000 — $230,000 USD
• We are committed to building a diverse team of Datavanters who are all responsible for stewarding a high-performance culture in which all Datavanters belong and thrive.
• We are proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, national origin, disability, veteran status, or other legally protected status.