Principal Data Engineer, Data Architecture

Rockstar Games • New York, NY

8h • Onsite

About The Position

At Rockstar Games, we create world-class entertainment experiences. Become part of a team working on some of the most rewarding, large-scale creative projects to be found in any entertainment medium - all within an inclusive, highly-motivated environment where you can learn and collaborate with some of the most talented people in the industry. Rockstar is looking for a passionate Principal Data Engineer, Data Architecture to provide cross-team oversight and alignment as we continue to scale our data platform.
The ideal candidate will be skilled in bridging between data engineering and other partner teams, guiding the design and implementation of data pipelines and streaming systems while reinforcing best practices and engineering standards. The Principal Data Engineer, Data Architecture will partner closely with platform, data science, and other services teams to strength our engineering culture and ensure our data solutions are consistent, reliable and future-ready.
This is a full-time, in-office position based out of Rockstar’s NYC headquarters in Downtown Manhattan.
The Rockstar Data Engineering team provides insights and actionable results to a wide variety of teams across the organization in support of their decision making.
We work with petabyte-scale data in Azure and Databricks, building both real-time and batch pipelines that power analytics, machine learning, and player experience improvements.

Requirements

• 10+ years in software engineering, including 3+ years in an architect or principal-level role in data adjacent domain.
• Ability to balance practical delivery with long-term architectural vision.
• Excellent communication and influence skills, able to provide constructive feedback and drive alignment across teams without direct authority.
• Strong software engineering background in data platforms or data platform adjacent applications.
• Experience mentoring and guiding engineers, with a focus on code quality, testing, and best practices.
• Proven track record designing real-time and batch data pipelines at enterprise scale.
• Strong understanding of distributed data systems, data modeling, and data governance.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with Databricks and Azure.
• Strong understanding of Data Governance, Data Privacy, and role-based access control.
• Experience working in the video game industry.
• Avid gamer with a passion for Rockstar Games titles.

Responsibilities

• Architect and guide the implementation of real-time streaming and batch data pipelines in data platform. Assure platform architecture aligns with strategic business goals.
• Act as a bridge between data engineering teams and the larger data organization, aligning technical solutions with strategic platform goals. Partner with platform engineers, data scientists, and analytics teams to enable reliable, high-quality data for downstream use cases.
• Review and validate data engineering solutions designed by team members and partner teams to ensure scalability, reliability, cost efficiency, and compliance with enterprise standards.
• Define and maintain best practices for data engineering across pipelines, streaming systems, and orchestration.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, patterns, and frameworks in data engineering, proposing adoption where they bring measurable value.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Education Level: No Education Listed