Role overview

Principal Data Engineer

Requirements and responsibilities

Readable role content extracted into sections for faster review.

What You’ll Do:

  • Architect the Data Platform – Own the end-to-end design of our data infrastructure. Make the foundational calls on pipeline architecture, data modeling patterns, and platform evolution across Snowflake, dbt, Airflow, and Terraform.
  • Define Engineering Standards – Establish and enforce practices around data quality, testing, observability, and deployment that the rest of the team builds on. Your patterns become the defaults.
  • Enable Data-Driven Decisions at Scale – Design semantic layers and data models complex enough to support underwriting, finance, and executive strategy. Simple enough that analysts can use them without hand-holding.
  • Drive Data Governance – Own the governance posture: data contracts, SLAs, lineage, and documentation. Make trusted data a property of the system, not a manual effort.
  • Shape the ML and AI Foundation – Partner with data science and engineering leadership to ensure the platform supports advanced analytics, ML pipelines, and AI initiatives.
  • Elevate the Team – Mentor engineers, conduct rigorous code and design reviews, and actively close skill gaps. Your leverage is measured in part by how much better the people around you get.
  • Partner at the Leadership Level – Engage directly with actuarial, underwriting, finance, and product leaders to translate business complexity into technical roadmap. You're a peer to stakeholders, not a ticket-taker.

You’ll be a great fit if you bring:

  • Low Ego, High Impact. You care more about getting it right than being right, and you have the credibility to back it up.
  • Strong Opinions, Weakly Held. You bring a clear point of view and defend it with evidence, but you update fast when the data changes.
  • Builder Mentality. You'd rather ship the solution than write a deck about it. You're still writing code.
  • Multiplier, Not Just Contributor. You measure your success by what the team ships, not just what you built yourself.
  • Team First. You want to win, but only if we win together.

Must Haves:

  • 8+ years of experience in data engineering or analytics engineering
  • Expert-level command of Python and SQL, with a history of production systems that others maintain and build on.
  • Deep hands-on experience with Airflow, dbt, Terraform, and Snowflake (or equivalents) in production environments.
  • Demonstrated ability to own platform architecture decisions end-to-end: design, tradeoffs, delivery, and iteration.
  • Track record of driving cross-functional alignment on technical direction without relying on positional authority.
  • Experience building and enforcing data quality, observability, and governance frameworks at scale.
  • Comfort operating in high-ambiguity environments where you define the path, not just walk it.

Nice to haves

  • Experience in insurance, fintech, or other regulated domains.
  • Familiarity with Power BI, Tableau, Looker, or other BI tools.
  • Experience designing for compliance and data governance requirements (SOC 2, CCPA, etc.).
  • Prior experience building data infrastructure at a high-growth startup for growth stage.

Tech Stack:

  • Languages: Python, SQL
  • Data Stack: Snowflake, dbt, Apache Airflow (AWS MWAA)
  • Cloud Infrastructure: AWS, Terraform
  • Tools: GitHub, Jira, Confluence, Slack

Benefits

  • Full remote flexibility and asynchronous work culture
  • Unlimited PTO and fully paid sick leave
  • Comprehensive health benefits, including medical, dental, and vision coverage, plus HSA and FSA options
  • Additional financial protection and retirement benefits, including a 401(k), company-paid life insurance, and disability coverage
  • A high degree of ownership, autonomy, and the opportunity to help build and shape a growing company
  • The chance to make a meaningful impact while working alongside an ambitious, high-performing team
  • Exposure to the challenges and opportunities of a fast-growing startup environment

Compensation

  • Base Salary Range $180,000-$220,000 This is a good-faith compensation range based on what Ledgebrook reasonably expects to pay for this position at the time of this posting. Actual compensation may vary based on a variety of relevant factors including experience, qualifications, geographic location and other relevant factors.
  • Employees in this position are eligible to participate in Ledgebrook’s equity incentive program.
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FocusData EngineeringRole area
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