SRX - Sr Data Engineer

IMPORTANT: At the moment we are only considering candidates located in Latin America. Please do not apply if you are not located in Latin America.

About Empirical

Empirical empowers early and growth stage tech companies to create the right products in the right way by providing two pivotal services:

• Product & Technology Leadership: Our clients entrust critical decisions to our network of top-tier US-based CTOs and CPOs. We provide fractional, project, or advisory based support, combining highly experienced talent with a flexible approach.

• Product Development Teams: We provide our clients with high performing, senior product development talent through a scalable staff augmentation model and ongoing support. We focus on Latin America to find exceptional talent, with time zone and cultural compatibility.

We are proud to be a people first company, where we prioritize building meaningful, long lasting human connections with clients and team members alike, while embracing diversity and uniqueness. With this foundation and our focus on talent, we help create great products that people love.

Our values

• Care about people first

• Strive to add value always

• Lead with integrity

• Have fun every step of the way

The Opportunity

Our client is seeking a highly motivated Senior Data Engineer to join their fast-paced data team. The ideal candidate will work closely with cross-functional teams to develop production-ready, scalable data pipelines, optimize data workflows, and ensure data quality and reliability. This role is part of our client's product & engineering organization, where the data engineering team is committed to creating a scalable and reliable data ecosystem, a vital foundation for delivering excellent service and operational superiority to their customers.

This role offers exposure to both data infrastructure and data engineering work, depending on the roadmap, and includes the opportunity to contribute to automation of internal data systems.

Main responsibilities

• Design, implement, and maintain distributed data systems to support data ingestion, transformation, and usability across business teams

• Build and optimize scalable, production-grade data pipelines using tools like Airflow, Spark, and DBT

• Model and manage datasets within modern data warehouses such as Snowflake or Databricks, ensuring performance and reliability

• Collaborate with analytics, ML, and product teams to ensure high-quality, accessible data for reporting and decision-making

• Implement and uphold data governance best practices across the full data lifecycle

• Support ongoing roadmap initiatives around data infrastructure automation and scalability

• Contribute to evaluating and applying AI/LLM best practices to improve data workflows and insights

• Maintain high code quality and reliability in a fast-paced, cross-functional environment

Your qualifications and experience

Must haves

• Bachelor's degree or above in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field

• 5+ years of experience in data engineering, including production-grade implementations

• Demonstrated experience with Snowflake and DBT in production settings (Databricks experience is also welcome!)

• Strong programming skills, including Python, SQL, and PySpark

• Mastery of data modeling concepts and database design principles with hands-on production implementation

• Familiarity with compiled languages such as Go, Scala, or Java

• Hands-on experience with ETL tools and frameworks (Apache Spark, Apache Airflow, DBT)

• Experience with version-controlled, modular data transformation workflows

• Strong problem-solving abilities and attention to detail

• Excellent communication and collaboration skills

Nice to haves

• Experience with OpenFlow or similar change data capture tools

• Exposure to Looker, Superset, or other modern BI tools

• Hands-on experience with LLMs or AI/ML best practices applied to data use cases

• Experience working across the full data lifecycle: ingestion, transformation, and usability by analytics and ML teams

• Healthcare or startup environment experience

What we expect from you

• 100% alignment with our core values!

• Ab