Description
We are seeking a Principal Data Engineer to set the technical direction for data at Hims & Hers. This is a senior individual contributor role in Data Platform Engineering, responsible for defining the architecture that determines how Software Engineering, Analytics Engineering, and Data Science build on data.
The platform runs on GCP BigQuery, Airflow on Astronomer/EKS, dbt, Confluent Kafka, Databricks Delta Lake, and Terraform/OpenTofu. You will decide on the multi-year platform architecture, including ingestion, streaming, orchestration, transformation, and serving as one system.
Key responsibilities include:
- Defining the multi-year platform architecture
- Making the streaming bet, determining whether Kafka to Flink to BigQuery stays an analytics pipeline or becomes production infrastructure
- Setting the contracts between organizations, including interfaces, service boundaries, and data contracts
- Defining what "trustworthy data" means and who is on the hook for it
- Designing the economics of the platform, including the cost structure and accountability framework
- Developing the self-service strategy for Analytics Engineering and Data Science
- Establishing the standards for testing, CI/CD, observability, schema governance, and infrastructure as code practice
- Chairing Architecture Review and making decision-maker of record for cross-team, multi-system, and cost-impacting changes
- Providing mentorship, design review, and hands-on pairing to improve Staff and Senior engineers
Requirements:
- 15+ years of experience building and owning data platform architecture
- Record of setting technical direction for organizations without managing them
- Deep GCP and BigQuery expertise, plus operational fluency in AWS
- Experience with modern data stack at platform scale, including dbt, Airflow, Kafka, Databricks, and Terraform
- Event streaming in production at scale, including Schema Registry, data contracts, and consumer lag management
- Data governance and compliance in a regulated environment, including HIPAA and PHI handling
- Strong Python and SQL skills
- Excellent writing skills for creating alignment across organizations
Preferred qualifications:
- Databricks, Unity Catalog, and Delta Lake in production at scale
- CDC patterns and Flink for real-time processing
- PySpark and SparkSQL for large-scale batch and streaming workloads
- Experience with MLOps partnership and data foundations behind AI-driven product features
Benefits:
- Competitive salary and equity compensation
- Unlimited PTO, company holidays, and quarterly mental health days
- Comprehensive health benefits, including medical, dental, and vision
- Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP)
- 401k benefits with employer matching contribution
- Offsite team retreats