Staff Data Engineer

Data EngineerPayabli is a next-generation Payments Infrastructure and Monetization Platform purpose-built for vertical software companies. Through a single, developer-friendly API with low-code embedded payment components, Payabli enables platforms to seamlessly embed, monetize, and operationalize payments—making payments a core part of their platform and business model.By unifying payment acceptance, payment issuance, and advanced payment operations tooling, Payabli empowers software companies to manage and move money through a single infrastructure stack that delivers total control over the payments experience. Built to scale with PCI DSS 4.0 and SOC 2-compliant security, Payabli's infrastructure delivers enterprise-grade reliability and trust while leveraging AI-driven intelligence to enhance visibility, streamline operations, and drive revenue growth.Backed by leading fintech investors including QED Investors, Fika Ventures, TTV Capital, and Bling Capital, Payabli is setting the standard for embedded payments infrastructure powering the next generation of vertical SaaS.This is the founding Data Engineer for the Data Engineering team at Payabli. You won't inherit an existing architecture or a pipeline graph someone else built - you'll make the foundational, one-way-door decisions that define how we model, move, and trust payments data for years to come: the warehouse and lakehouse direction, how we model payments data, how we keep sensitive financial data safe, and what "good" looks like for every data engineer who follows you.The leverage is the point. The choices you make in your first quarter will still be load-bearing years from now, and you'll be the technical foundation beneath our analytics, ML, and AI ambitions. If you're energized by building it right the first time rather than untangling it later, this is a rare seatWhat You'll Do: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.What We're Looking For:We're looking for someone who meets the minimum requirements below. If you meet them, we encourage you to apply. Your skills and trajectory matter more than checking every box.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.Nice to Haves:Payments, fintech, or other regulated-domain experience, including familiarity with PCI DSS and tokenization/vaulting patterns.Streaming infrastructure (Kafka, Kinesis, Flink).Data governance, lineage, and observability tooling (Unity Catalog, Snowflake Horizon, Monte Carlo, Great Expectations, OpenLineage).Experience supporting ML/AI workloads - feature stores, training/inference pipelines, MLflow.An interest in growing into people leadership as the function scales. We expect technical leadership from this role from the start; whether you want to manage a team down the road is genuinely up to you, and there's a clear path if you do.We think you'll love being part of our team becauseAt Payabli, you'll have a front row seat into building a high-growth venture backed fintech company. As a senior leader in Operations, you'll shape how the organization scales and be the driving force behind our AI-first operations strategy — directly influencing how we build, automate, and optimize for the future. You'll stretch yourself every day, learn a ton, grow alongside the company, and have a lot of fun building Payabli with us. We're a values driven company that cares deeply about our team, partners, and customers. Our north star values are:Team Love = Customer Love — You understand that when you build great products for your internal partners, they deliver exceptional experiences to merchants. You obsess over the platform partners and businesses that depend on every payout landing on time.Run to the Fire — When ACH returns spike or a card program hits a snag, you're the first one in the war room. You don't shy away from hard problems—you chase them. You volunteer for the complex, messy challenges others avoid.Little Things Count — You sweat the details because you know a single decimal error in a payout can damage a business. You double-check edge cases, validate every assumption, and understand that excellence lives in the details.Truth Seekers — You give direct feedback, receive it with grace, and never let ego get in the way of finding the right answer. You document what you don't know, admit mistakes quickly, and hold yourself accountable in the open.Relentlessly Curious — You're constantly asking "what if?" and "why not?" You study how competitors solve problems, explore adjacent industries for inspiration, and never stop learning about the payments ecosystem.We build technology that gets noticed and a workplace where people want to grow their careers. Our work has been recognized by some of the industry's most respected organizations, including the 2026 Forbes Fintech 50 list, which highlights the most innovative private companies in financial technology, Inc.'s 2025 Best Workplaces, and Built In's 2026 Best Places to Work in Miami.What We Can Offer YouCompetitive salaryStock options with the potential to unlock more equity as we growFlexible PTO and paid parental leaveMedical, dental, & vision insurance401K, HSA, pre-tax savings programsPayabli is an equal opportunity employer and values a diverse, inclusive workplace.Principals only. No external agency submissions. Candidates must apply directly; We will not accept submissions from third-party recruiters or staffing agencies.