Sr Staff - Data Platform Engineer

About Us As a Sr. Staff Data Platform Engineer, you will be the primary architect and visionary for the core data infrastructure that powers the entire enterprise. This is a "platform-as-a-product" role; your mission is to build the internal foundation—creating the high-performance engines, abstraction layers, and self-service frameworks that enable hundreds of other engineers to move faster. You will operate at the intersection of Systems Programming and Data Engineering, solving "hard-tech" problems like automated schema evolution, multi-engine compute optimization, and global data discovery. As a top-level technical individual contributor, you will bridge the gap between long-term business strategy and deep-kernel technical execution, ensuring WEX’s data platform remains a competitive advantage. Responsibilities Architectural Sovereignty: Define the 3-5 year technical roadmap for the Data Lakehouse, determining how storage, compute, and metadata layers (e.g., Apache Iceberg, Snowflake Horizon or Databricks Unity Catalog) interact at an elemental level. Platform-as-a-Product: Build internal SDKs, CLI tools, and automated orchestration frameworks to abstract cloud complexity via Control Planes and Custom Operators, allowing Data Engineers to focus on business logic. Internal R&D: Prototype and benchmark emerging technologies (e.g., specialized Spark extensions) to keep the platform at the bleeding edge of performance and cost‑efficiency. Global Governance & Security: Architect "compliance-by-design" systems, automating data lineage, PII masking, and fine-grained access control across petabyte-scale environments without sacrificing velocity. AI Governance Lake: Facilitate real‑time data ingestion by implementing streaming support for OpenTelemetry data from AI Agents into the Data Lake, and drive the development of advanced AI evaluation metrics and reporting. Engineering Excellence & Influence: Set the gold standard for code quality and system design across the company. Lead cross‑functional architecture reviews and serve as the final escalation point for the most complex system outages or performance bottlenecks. Organizational Mentorship: Foster an "Engineering Community," influencing the hiring bar and professional development paths for the entire data engineering organization. Qualifications & Experience Experience: 15+ years in software engineering and distributed systems, with at least 4 years in a principal or staff‑level capacity leading platform‑scale initiatives. Core Technical Competencies (Software Engineering Focus): Strong Software Foundations: fundamentals in software engineering, system architecture, and scalable production applications (Algorithms, Data Structures, and System Design). Java/J2EE ecosystem (Spring Boot, Microservices) and Python proficiency. Data as a Product: Build platforms/framework engines and APIs that power data movement, not just ETL/ELT pipelines. Data Lakehouse Mastery: Deep knowledge of Apache Iceberg, Hudi, or Delta Lake (metadata management, manifest files, compaction strategies). Open-source contributions: Experience contributing to or customizing open-source data projects (e.g., Spark, dbt). High-throughput, fault-tolerant data pipelines and orchestration frameworks to ensure robust transformations and data quality. Cloud & Infrastructure: Extensive experience with AWS (S3, EMR, Kubernetes, Lambda) and Azure. Deep understanding of CI/CD automation, modern development tools, Git Actions, Terraform, and related frameworks. AI-Driven Development & Productivity: Experience leveraging AI Code Gen platforms into the SDLC to automate code generation, reviews, unit test generation, and root‑cause analysis of failures. LLM‑Ops for Platform: Ability to architect infrastructure required to support AI Agent development, enabling vector database integration. Leadership & Vision: Proven track record of leading by influence, driving adoption of new technologies across autonomous teams. Excellent communication of complex architectural trade‑offs (e.g., "Latency vs. Consistency", "Build vs. Buy") to C‑suite executives and engineering teams. Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science (Distributed Systems focus) preferred, or equivalent deep industry experience. Compensation & Benefits Base pay range: $220,000.00 – $255,800.00. (Actual rates vary based on qualifications, skills, and role proficiency.) Benefits: health, dental, and vision insurance; retirement savings plan; paid time off; health savings account; flexible spending accounts; life insurance; disability insurance; tuition reimbursement, and more. WEX is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, race, color, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, protected veteran status, disability or other protected status. WEX promotes a drug‑free workplace. Qualified individuals with a disability have the right to request a reasonable accommodation. If you require a reasonable accommodation as a result of your disability at any point in the job application process, please submit your request through our Reasonable Accommodation Request Form. 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