Senior Data Engineer I

SpotHero•Chicago, IL

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

SpotHero is seeking a Senior Data Engineer to join the Data Engineering squad. This squad interacts with data consumers such as Data Science, Marketing, Engineering, and Business Analysts to provide data platform solutions that meet their day-to-day needs and long term vision. As a Senior Data Engineer, you’ll focus heavily on backend application development with a focus on building reusable infrastructure services for our stakeholders to enable them to model, store, access, process, and analyze SpotHero’s data. You’ll also design, instantiate, observe and maintain infrastructure services, both AWS-managed and open source solutions. As a Senior Data Engineer, you’ll influence the technology choices and patterns established for data-heavy workloads at SpotHero.

Requirements

Design and implement high-quality software in Python.
Experience using SQL to read and manage data.
Experience with Airflow, Luigi, Prefect, or other ETL scheduling tools.
Experience provisioning and managing infrastructure with infrastructure-as-code tools (we use Terraform, but experience with similar tools like CloudFormation, Pulumi, or SaltStack is totally fine!)
Hands-on experience using multiple data platforms and tools (e.g. Airflow, Hive, Kafka, Postgres, Redshift, S3, Spark, Trino, Airbyte), and experience deploying, monitoring, and maintaining at least one of them
Experience designing and implementing software (pipelines, services and client libraries) that is run in Docker containers, automatically tested on a continuous integration (CI) system, and versioned in git.
Experience writing shell scripts, Makefiles, or other configuration to glue together these components.
Ability to deploy containerized software in Kubernetes, or sufficient experience in similar technologies like Apache Mesos or Amazon ECS.
Demonstrated experience designing and supporting technology intended to be used by other stakeholders.
Strong ability to communicate on both business and technology subjects.

Nice To Haves

Message driven or streaming architectures, such as those with Kafka, Spark, Flink.
Postgres, MySQL, or other RDBMS experience.
Redshift, Presto, or other MPP database experience.
Experience with at least one JVM language (we use Kotlin, but Java or Scala experience works).
Experience with cloud data pipeline services like dbt Cloud, Airbyte, or Hightouch.
Experience using the latest AI tooling (Claude, Codex, etc.)

Responsibilities

Work with our Analytics, Data Science, Marketing and other squads to understand their data storage and processing needs.
Be a hands-on contributor to the design and implementation of our data platform solutions from the infrastructure layer up to the API.
Build robust pipelines that make sure data is where it needs to be, when it needs to be there in a manner that scales.
Build frameworks and tools to help others design and build their own data pipelines in a self-service manner.
Performance testing and engineering to ensure that our systems always scale to meet our needs.
Be a key member of the team focused on hands-on contribution to the implementation and operation of our data platform.

Benefits

Generous portion of Medical Premiums covered
50% of Dental and Vision Premiums covered
Company-sponsored Life Insurance, STD, and AD&D coverage
401(k) with match and immediate vesting
Comprehensive leave policies
Flexible PTO policy
Outstanding work/life balance
UberEats weekly lunch stipend for in-office days
Udemy License and Personal Learning Budget
Annual parking stipend
Opportunity to collaborate with fun, innovative, and passionate people in a casual yet highly productive atmosphere.
Opportunity to be part of Employee Resource Groups
Access to allyship learning resources
Actively contribute to our ongoing effort of making SpotHero inclusive for all.
Employee programs to grow and support our people such as Discovery Days for Product and Engineering, Gearing up for Aspiring Leaders, and Mentorship Program.
Wellness program – a workplace that actively supports your physical and mental wellbeing through ongoing events, initiatives, resources, and thoughtful perks and benefits.
A workplace recognized as CityLights award winner by 1871, 2026 Best Places To Work by BuiltIn, Most Loved Workplace Certified by the Best Practice Institute, and recipient of multiple Comparably awards, including Best Company Culture, Best Company for Women, and Best Company for Diversity.