Principal Engineer Data Streaming

Empower • Overland Park, KS

1d • $138,000 - $200,100 • Hybrid

About The Position

Our vision for the future is based on the idea that transforming financial lives starts by giving our people the freedom to transform their own. We have a flexible work environment, and fluid career paths. We not only encourage but celebrate internal mobility. We also recognize the importance of purpose, well-being, and work-life balance. Within Empower and our communities, we work hard to create a welcoming and inclusive environment, and our associates dedicate thousands of hours to volunteering for causes that matter most to them. Chart your own path and grow your career while helping more customers achieve financial freedom. Empower Yourself. Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa at this time, including CPT/OPT. The Principal Data Streaming Engineer will serve as the enterprise technical authority for real-time and near-real-time data streaming platforms and architectures, defining the long-term streaming strategy and architectural standards for scalable, reliable, and secure data integration across the organization. This role operates across multiple teams and business domains with formal architectural governance and approval authority for streaming solutions, while remaining hands-on through reference implementations, code reviews, and production issue resolution. The role also provides thought leadership, technical direction, and mentorship to elevate streaming and distributed systems practices enterprise-wide.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience.
• 12+ years of software or data engineering experience with progressively increasing technical leadership responsibility.
• Deep, hands-on expertise with Kafka and Striim in large-scale, production environments.
• Extensive experience designing and supporting CDC and streaming integrations with Oracle, PostgreSQL, Redshift, and Snowflake.
• Expert-level understanding of distributed systems, streaming architectures, and event-driven design patterns.
• Demonstrated ability to define enterprise standards and exercise formal architectural approval authority.
• Strong communication, documentation, and technical leadership skills.

Responsibilities

• Define, own, and approve enterprise architecture and technical standards for data streaming, CDC, and event-driven integration patterns.
• Establish and enforce organization-wide best practices for Kafka and Striim implementation, including topic design, partitioning, schema evolution, pipeline configuration, reliability, observability, testing, and operational readiness.
• Govern end-to-end streaming and CDC flows from source systems through Kafka and Striim pipelines to analytical and operational targets.
• Lead architectural design, formal reviews, and approval of complex, large-scale streaming solutions spanning multiple source systems, platforms, and domains.
• Serve as the highest-level technical escalation point for streaming platform design, performance, scalability, reliability, and production issue resolution.
• Partner with enterprise architects, platform engineering, security, and governance teams to align streaming solutions with enterprise architecture and data strategy.
• Establish standards for operational resilience, including replay capabilities, observability, and testing.
• Influence platform roadmaps by evaluating emerging streaming technologies and recommending strategic investments.
• Provide authoritative technical guidance through design reviews, documentation, and architectural decision records.
• Drive adoption of event-driven and real-time integration patterns through technical advocacy and enablement.
• Mentor senior, lead, and mid-level engineers to raise the maturity of data streaming and distributed systems practices.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision and life insurance
• Retirement savings – 401(k) plan with generous company matching contributions (up to 6%), financial advisory services, potential company discretionary contribution, and a broad investment lineup
• Tuition reimbursement up to $5,250/year
• Business-casual environment that includes the option to wear jeans
• Generous paid time off upon hire – including a paid time off program plus ten paid company holidays and three floating holidays each calendar year
• Paid volunteer time — 16 hours per calendar year
• Leave of absence programs – including paid parental leave, paid short- and long-term disability, and Family and Medical Leave (FMLA)
• Business Resource Groups (BRGs) – BRGs facilitate inclusion and collaboration across our business internally and throughout the communities where we live, work and play. BRGs are open to all.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal