Principal Data Engineer

Job Title: Principal Data Engineer

Location: USA (Remote only)

Contract Type: Permanent

Salary: $250,000–$285,000 + significant equity

About the Role

We’re partnering with a cutting-edge, Series A AI-powered startup that’s reimagining the way people shop. As they prepare to launch a game-changing product later this year, they’re looking for a Principal Data Engineer to lead the charge in building scalable, intelligent data infrastructure from the ground up.

You’ll play a central role in shaping their real-time and batch data systems, powering next-gen AI/ML applications with NLP, LLMs, and massive-scale product datasets. This is a high-impact, high-ownership opportunity in a small, elite team (~30 people), with a chance to build 0–1 as the most senior data hire.

What You’ll Be Doing:

• Architecting distributed, cloud-native data systems
• Building both real-time and batch pipelines to fuel ML and analytics
• Applying NLP, LLMs, and embeddings to automate and enhance data quality
• Leading best practices across the data stack and mentoring junior engineers
• Collaborating cross-functionally to define data strategy and scale infrastructure

What You’ll Bring:

• 6+ years in software/data engineering with a focus on scalable systems
• Deep experience with Spark, Databricks, or Hadoop
• Strong Python development skills
• Expertise in distributed computing, and both SQL/NoSQL (Postgres, DynamoDB, MongoDB)
• Experience with AI/ML data infrastructure a major plus

Why Join?

• Work remotely from anywhere in the U.S.
• Join a VC-backed team with serious ambition and high-profile investors
• Help launch a product with significant industry potential
• High equity, high impact, and a fast-moving, mission-driven culture