Manager, Data Engineering

Manager, Data Engineering

New York, New York

Apply

Who We Are

At Justworks, you’ll enjoy a welcoming and casual environment, great benefits, wellness program offerings, company retreats, and the ability to interact with and learn from leaders in the startup community. We work hard and care about our most prized asset - our people.

We’re helping businesses get off the ground by enabling them to focus on running their business. We solve HR issues. We’re data-driven and never stop iterating. If you’d like to work in a supportive, entrepreneurial environment, are interested in building something meaningful and having fun while doing it, we’d love to hear from you.

We're united by shared goals and shared motivations at Justworks. These are best summed up in our company values, which are reflected in our product and in our team.

Our Values (

If this sounds like you, you’ll fit right in.

Department

Technology, Data & Analytics

About The Team

The Data & Analytics team is Justworks' data and AI center of excellence — a connected set of functions spanning business intelligence, data science, analytics engineering, platform data/ML engineering and AI builders. We've grown significantly over the last several years and continue to build momentum across the business, leveling up maturity in how we deliver insights, govern data, and enable the company to make better decisions. You'll find a highly collaborative & diverse group motivated by craft, shared learning, and a genuine commitment to growing our impact for customers while evolving how we work together for our people. Come build with us!

The Data Platform Engineering team sits at the core of this foundation, owning the pipelines, platform infrastructure, and reliability that every other DNA function depends on.

Who You Are

You are an experienced data engineer who has moved into leadership — with deep technical roots and a track record of shipping reliable, scalable pipelines and infrastructure. You are equally comfortable reviewing a pull request, unblocking a delivery problem, and developing the engineers on your team. You take ownership seriously — of the team's output, the platform's health, and the standards that keep both running well.

As Manager, Data Engineering, you will lead a team of engineers delivering against the data platform roadmap. You will own execution and delivery quality, keep your team productive and growing, and partner closely with analytics engineering, data science, and business stakeholders to ensure the platform delivers what downstream teams need.

Your Success Profile What You Will Work On

Engineering & Delivery

• Lead the design and delivery of scalable data pipelines that power analytics and business operations across Justworks

• Take an active, hands-on role in coding, code review, and technical problem-solving alongside the team

• Drive operational excellence within your team - observability, data quality, cost optimization, and delivery predictability

• Maintain and evolve data infrastructure as code, ensuring the platform is auditable, repeatable, and resilient

• Define and enforce engineering best practices — testing, documentation, CI/CD, and code review standards

People & Team Health

• Manage, mentor, and develop a team of data engineers — setting goals, providing regular feedback, and building technical craft

• Create an environment where engineers ship consistently, grow their skills, and take ownership of outcomes

• Recruit and hire high-caliber data engineers as the team grows

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Partner with analytics engineering, data science, BI, and business stakeholders to understand requirements and translate them into platform delivery

• Collaborate with other engineering teams to align on data contracts, security, and compliance standards

• Communicate delivery status, tradeoffs, and dependencies clearly to your Sr. Manager and cross-functional partners

How You Will Do Your Work

As a Manager, Data Platform Engineering,, how results are achieved is paramount for your success and ultimately results in our success as an organization. In this role, your foundational knowledge, skills, abilities, and personal attributes are anchored in the following competencies:

• Plans & Aligns - Ensures individual actions support company mission; communicates effectively; understands urgency and plans accordingly

• Balances Stakeholders - Understands internal and external stakeholder requirements, expectations, and needs and acts fairly despite conflicting demands of stakeholders.

• Influence and leadership - fostering a community of knowledge-sharing, collaboration, mentorship, and forward-thinking across the organization.

• Manages Complexity - Making sense of complex, high quantity, and sometimes contradictory information to effectively solve problems.

• Good Judgment - Pauses before acting; asks questions to fully understand context; applies critical thinking and takes ownership of outcomes

• Teamwork & Communication - Honors diverse thoughts and opinions; leverages unique skills to maximize efficiency

• Skills and knowledge - the capacity to actively learn and apply specific domain knowledge, know-how, and best practices to continually enhance and improve.

In addition, all Justworkers focus on aligning their behaviors to our core values known as COGIS. It stands for:

• Camaraderie - Day to day you can be seen working together toward a higher purpose. You like to have fun. You’re an active listener, treat people respectfully, and have a strong desire to know and help others.

• Openness - Your default is to be open. You're willing to share information, understand other perspectives, and consider new possibilities. You’re curious, ask open questions, and are receptive to thoughts and feedback from others.

• Grit - You demonstrate grit by having the courage to commit and persevere. You’re committed, earnest, and dive in to get the job done well with a positive attitude.

• Integrity - Simply put, do what you say and say what you'll do. You’re honest and forthright, have a strong moral compass, and strive to match your words with your actions while leading by example.

• Simplicity - Be like Einstein: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

Qualifications

You're a builder who applies systems thinking to internal infrastructure. You're comfortable working across a diverse data organization and partnering with leadership to turn fragmented ways of working into scalable, durable systems.

• 7+ years of professional hands-on experience in data engineering, with a focus on building data pipelines and platform infrastructure

• 1+ years of people management experience, with a track record of developing engineers and building high-performing teams

• Deep proficiency in SQL and Python; recognized by peers for technical rigor and sound engineering judgment

• Strong experience with Snowflake - schema design, query optimization, cost governance, and data sharing

• Strong foundational knowledge in data warehousing, ETL/ELT pipelines, and cloud data platforms

• Experience with workflow orchestration, monitoring, and testing using tools such as Airflow, dbt, or equivalent

• Expertise with AWS services (S3, Lambda, Fargate, Redshift, Kinesis, etc.) and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CloudFormation)

• Strong experience with data security, compliance, and governance in a production environment

• Comfortable with ambiguity — able to identify what needs to be done, set clear milestones, and drive work forward

• Strong communicator with the ability to engage technical and non-technical stakeholders effectively

Nice to have

• Familiarity with data lakehouse patterns and cost optimization strategies at scale

• Background in a regulated or compliance-sensitive environment (fintech, HR tech, healthcare)

Technologies Used

• Languages: Python, SQL, Terraform

• Data & Analytics: Snowflake, dbt, Fivetran

• Streaming & CDC: Estuary

• Workflow Orchestration: Airflow, MWAA

• Cloud: AWS (S3, Lambda, Fargate, Redshift, Kinesis, Step Functions, EventBridge)

• Observability & Monitoring: Datadog

• CI/CD: CircleCI, GitHub Actions

The base wage range for this position based in our New York City Office is targeted at $205,000.00 - $261,500.00 per year.

#LI-DG2 #LI-Hybrid

Actual compensation is based on multiple factors that are unique to each candidate, including and not limited to skill set, level of relevant experience, and specific work location. Salary ranges for positions based in other locations may differ based on the cost of labor in that location.

For more information about Justworks’ Total Reward Philosophy, including all of the perks and benefits we are proud to offer our team members, please visit Total Rewards @ Justworks ( .

Diversity At Justworks

Justworks is committed to maintaining a workplace where diversity of identity, culture, and life experience is the norm and is celebrated authentically and respected consistently. Diversity in our work, our people, and our product drives creativity and innovation, entrepreneurial leadership and integrity, competitiveness, and collaboration throughout our business and in the market. We depend on our differences to make our team stronger, our workplace more dynamic, and our product accessible to all of our customers.

We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer open to all qualified applicants regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital or familial status, disability, pregnancy, gender identity or expression, veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status. Justworks is fully dedicated to providing necessary support to candidates with disabilities who may require reasonable accommodations. We also provide reasonable accommodations to employees based on their sincerely held religious beliefs, as well as for other covered reasons consistent with applicable federal, state, and local laws. If you're in need of a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at View email address on click.appcast.io. Your comfort and success matter to us, and we're here to ensure an inclusive experience.

Our DEIB Report (