Principal Data Engineer

Serv Recruitment Agency

1d•Remote

About The Position

Virtual Intros is building the intelligence layer for meaningful, privacy-first connection across people, companies, and communities, turning real-time engagement into measurable business value. The platform is supported by modern architecture including microservices, Infrastructure as Code, and distributed systems, and is now evolving to include a secure, multi-tenant data foundation that powers analytics, reporting, and AI-enabled capabilities at enterprise scale.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in data engineering with principal-level ownership
Proven experience owning foundational data architecture in production environments
Strong experience with modern data pipelines across batch and streaming systems
Deep expertise in data modeling for both operational and analytical use cases
Proven experience designing multi-tenant data systems and isolation strategies
Strong understanding of data governance, privacy, and sensitive data handling
Advanced SQL skills and experience with modern processing frameworks such as Spark, Flink, or equivalent
Experience with AWS data services including S3, Glue, Kinesis, RDS, or similar
Experience ingesting and modeling data from document-based systems such as MongoDB
Experience working with graph data models and graph databases such as Neo4j or Amazon Neptune
Experience with modern cloud data warehouses such as Snowflake or Redshift
Experience with data transformation tools such as dbt including testing and CI/CD
Experience building ingestion pipelines from CDC, object storage, and streaming systems
Experience managing or governing external data vendors and partners
Experience communicating data strategy and tradeoffs to executive stakeholders

Nice To Haves

Experience supporting AI, machine learning, or embedding-based data use cases
Experience with data cataloging, lineage, and governance tools
Background in enterprise or regulated data environments
Experience with real-time and event-driven data architectures
Experience in high-growth or startup environments scaling toward enterprise
Is proactive and accountable
Thinks strategically and executes consistently
Communicates with clarity and confidence
Brings a positive, growth-oriented mindset
Is highly organized and dependable
Embraces learning and feedback
Cares deeply about doing great work

Responsibilities

Define and own the foundational data architecture including data models, relationships, and source-of-truth systems
Establish data contracts and guide the evolution from operational data to analytical and AI-ready systems
Design and build end-to-end data pipelines from ingestion through serving layers
Implement scalable ingestion from relational databases, object storage, event streams, and SaaS APIs
Own transformation layer architecture including modeling, testing, documentation, and CI/CD integration
Establish data quality, observability, schema management, and pipeline reliability standards
Design multi-tenant data models, storage layouts, and access patterns
Implement tenant-aware security including row-level and column-level controls
Define data lifecycle management including retention, archival, and deletion strategies
Establish data governance standards including classification, lineage, cataloging, and auditability
Partner with security and compliance teams to ensure privacy and regulatory alignment
Design serving layers for analytics, reporting, and internal business use
Prepare data systems to support AI-enabled capabilities including embeddings and advanced data structures
Evaluate and implement graph-based data models where appropriate
Mentor engineers and provide architectural oversight across internal and external contributors
Lead vendor evaluation and manage external data partners to ensure alignment with standards
Drive data literacy and data-informed decision making across the organization