Staff Engineer - Data Foundations

Adyen•San Francisco, CA

1d•$258,000 - $367,000•Onsite

About The Position

Adyen is building a Data Foundations team across San Francisco and Amsterdam to establish the foundations that enable trusted, consistent, and usable company data. Based in San Francisco, the Staff Engineer will join as a technical leader, work closely with the Data Foundations lead in Amsterdam, and shape data architecture and standards across the engineering organization. The role offers substantial autonomy in managing the work week. The Staff Engineer will establish target architecture for shared data models, data contracts, and the semantic layer; help domain teams define and own core metrics; and make versioned contracts, ownership, automated checks, and data lineage standard practices. They will guide teams in publishing well-defined data products while remaining hands-on through prototyping, design reviews, and solving complex data-stack problems. The role also involves influencing teams through evidence, prototypes, and trust, partnering with stakeholders across Adyen, and mentoring engineers.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in data engineering or data architecture.
Experience working at Staff scope and setting direction for more than one team while remaining hands-on.
Experience designing shared data models, data contracts, or semantic layers used by many teams, and ability to defend the trade-offs.
Experience influencing what other teams build without direct authority, using data, prototypes, and trust.
Ability to explain complex ideas clearly to engineers, finance professionals, and executives; strong writing skills.
Ability to work effectively with Engineering, Product, Finance, Compliance, and other stakeholders across time zones.
Ability to identify needed changes and drive them to completion independently.

Responsibilities

Build the greenfield mandate, architecture, and standards for Data Foundations.
Set target architecture for shared data models, data contracts, and the semantic layer used by domain teams.
Work with domain teams to define core metrics once, assign ownership to the domain that creates them, and give metric variants distinct names.
Establish data contracts between producers and consumers, including owners, versions, and automated checks.
Build data lineage so users can trace figures back to their sources.
Guide domain teams in publishing datasets with a clear owner, schema, and service level, while maintaining shared standards.
Remain hands-on by building prototypes, reviewing designs, and solving difficult problems in the data stack.
Partner with Product, Finance, Compliance, Platform Engineering, and domain leads; use data and working prototypes to support decisions.
Mentor engineers in Data Foundations and domain teams, help them develop their own solutions, and raise the bar in design reviews.