Staff Data Engineer

Role Description

We're looking for a Staff Data Engineer to serve as a technical leader on Cribl's Data Engineering team. You will be someone who can set direction for the systems that power analytics, data science, and operational decision-making across the company. You'll operate at the intersection of the modern data stack (Snowflake, SQL, dbt), software and platform engineering (AWS, infrastructure-as-code, orchestration, observability), and our fast-emerging AI/agentic workflows.

This is a high-leverage, hands-on leadership role. As a Staff engineer you'll act as a technical lead:

• Partnering with the Data Engineering manager to shape technical strategy and architecture.
• Mentoring and growing junior and mid-level data engineers.
• Raising the bar on how the team designs, builds, and operates its platform.

The pipelines, services, and standards you establish will directly influence how teams across Cribl understand the business, make better decisions, and experiment with new AI-driven experiences.

As An Active Member Of Our Team, You Will…

• Serve as a technical lead for the Data Engineering team.
• Own architecture and design decisions for core data systems and drive reliable, production-grade outcomes.
• Partner with stakeholders across functions (Data Analysts, SREs, IT Engineers, and business teams).
• Clarify requirements, validate outputs, and communicate risks, tradeoffs, and timelines proactively.
• Own and operate our self-hosted orchestration platform.
• Run and evolve our self-managed Prefect deployment and its build/worker system.
• Own Cribl's Snowflake environment.
• Serve as the subject-matter expert on data modeling, performance, and cost optimization.
• Build, operate, and monitor the core data tech stack.
• Advance the modern data stack.
• Develop cloud-native services and infrastructure on AWS.
• Advance our infrastructure-as-code practice (Terraform or similar).
• Partner with the Data Engineering manager to set technical direction.
• Mentor and grow data engineers through code review, pairing, design feedback, and coaching.
• Support Cribl's growing data science and agentic initiatives.
• Contribute to secure, compliance-minded engineering practices in collaboration with IT/Security.

We are a remote-first company and work happens across many time-zones – you may be required to occasionally perform duties outside your standard working hours.

Qualifications

• Deep expertise in Snowflake: advanced data modeling, query and warehouse performance tuning, cost management, and security/RBAC design.
• Demonstrated technical leadership: experience as a tech lead or staff-level engineer setting direction, driving architecture, and delivering complex systems across a team.
• Excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration: able to work across data, engineering, and business teams and lead through influence.
• A track record of mentoring engineers: growing junior and mid-level engineers through coaching, review, and pairing.
• Strong Python and SQL fundamentals, with solid ELT patterns and data modeling experience.
• Hands-on experience operating self-hosted / self-managed orchestration.
• Hands-on AWS and infrastructure-as-code experience: building cloud infrastructure with Terraform (or equivalent).
• Experience building cloud applications or backend services: APIs, ingestion services, and event-driven workflows.
• Production-grade engineering practices: logging, alerting, versioning, CI/CD.
• Fluency building with AI-assisted development platforms such as Claude Code.

Requirements

• Must be comfortable owning upgrades, workers, and the operational footprint of orchestration.
• Experience running (not just authoring on) Airflow/Dagster on your own infrastructure is acceptable.

Benefits

• Health, dental, vision, short-term disability, and life insurance.
• Paid holidays and paid time off.
• A fertility treatment benefit.
• 401(k) and equity.

Company Description

Diversity drives innovation, enables better decisions to support our customers, and inspires change for the better. We’re building a culture where differences are valued and welcomed, and we work together to bring out the best in each other.