Data Engineer

About the RoleWe're looking for a Data Engineer who wants to operate like a founder. Not someone who wants to spend their time maintaining dashboards, moving tickets across a board, or optimizing pipelines in a mature environment. Someone who sees infrastructure as a product, thrives in ambiguity, and wants to build the systems that power the next generation of AI applications.This is not a traditional data engineering role. You'll own critical pieces of the infrastructure that power our AI workers, customer data platform, and future data architecture. You'll work across data engineering, backend systems, infrastructure, and AI, building foundational systems that directly impact how our products behave in the real world.The best people for this role think in systems, move with urgency, and use AI as leverage.Location is flexible—we’re hiring in San Francisco (in-office) and remotely throughout the U.S. and Canada.Why this role is differentThe role of data engineering is changing. As AI becomes more capable, the bottleneck increasingly shifts from models to data. The best AI systems aren't defined by the model they're using. They're defined by what they know, what they can access, and how effectively they can retrieve and reason over information.At 11x, we're building AI workers that operate on behalf of our customers. For those workers to become more useful, more autonomous, and more intelligent, they need access to the right data at the right time.Every improvement in data access, retrieval, enrichment, synchronization, and infrastructure directly improves the capabilities of our agents. That means the systems you build won't sit behind the scenes. They'll determine what our AI workers can understand, what actions they can take, and how much value they can deliver.The quality of our AI workers is ultimately constrained by the quality of the data systems behind them. You'll be responsible for pushing that frontier forward.We believe the future belongs to engineers who:think like ownersbuild systems that scale beyond themselvesuse AI tools fluentlycare about outcomes, not just implementationmove quickly through ambiguityenjoy building foundational infrastructure from first principlesIf that excites you, you'll probably love working here.What You'll DoOwn and extend our customer data ingestion platformBuild and maintain large-scale data pipelines powering AI products and customer workflowsDesign systems for syncing customer data across external platforms, CRMs, and third-party systemsHelp architect our future data lake, retrieval layer, and data infrastructure strategyBuild ingestion and querying systems for lead, account, enrichment, and customer knowledge dataCreate the infrastructure that gives our AI workers access to the information they need to reason, act, and improve over timePartner closely with product and engineering teams to unlock new AI product capabilitiesImprove reliability, observability, performance, and scalability across our data stackContribute across backend systems and infrastructure, not just traditional data engineering projectsPush ideas into production quickly instead of over-optimizing in planning phasesWhat We're Looking For4+ years of software engineering or data engineering experienceStrong experience building and maintaining production-grade data systems and pipelinesExperience with Python and TypescriptStrong backend engineering fundamentals beyond traditional data engineeringHigh agency — you naturally move things forward without waiting for directionComfort operating in ambiguity and building without a playbookStrong systems thinking and architectural intuitionAbility to balance speed with long-term scalabilityStrong problem-solving skills and a willingness to own problems end-to-endHungry to grow. You want expanding scope, responsibility, and ownership over timeExcitement about AI-native workflows and the future of software developmentNice to HaveExperience with ClickHouse or other columnar databasesExperience building customer data platforms (CDPs)Experience with Airbyte or similar data integration and ingestion platformsExperience with CRM integrations and synchronization systemsExperience designing data lake architectureExperience supporting AI or ML productsYou've used tools like Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or similar heavily in your workflowYou care deeply about engineering velocity and iteration speedWhat Success Looks LikeYou help us:Build the data foundation that powers our AI workersGive our agents access to the information they need to reason and act effectivelyUnlock new product capabilities through better retrieval, enrichment, and infrastructureMove faster without sacrificing reliabilityTurn complex data problems into elegant systemsCreate a culture where engineering is deeply tied to ownership, execution, and outcomesThis is a role for someone who wants an unusual amount of ownership, autonomy, and leverage.If you're excited by the idea of building the infrastructure behind AI products, shaping core systems from the ground up, and using AI to dramatically expand what one person can build — we'd love to talk.CompensationBase salary range: $170,000-$200,000*Final offer will be based on a variety of factors, including role level, relevant experience, skills, and job-related expertise.11x is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition, or any other basis protected by law.