Principal SWE, Data Lake Engineering

This is a remote position; however, the candidate must reside within 30 miles of one of the following locations: Portland, ME; Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; and San Francisco Bay Area, CA.

About the Team/Role

We are looking for a highly motivated, technically deep, and experienced Software Engineer to join the org and build out the Data Lake Platform for Wex.

This Principal SWE will report to the Sr Director of Data Lake Engineering located in the San Francisco Bay Area. This role can also be in Chicago, Portland, Maine (Wex HQ), or Boston.  The ideal candidate will be a hands-on leader with deep technical expertise in building and scaling data lake environments, coupled with strong people leadership and communication skills to drive alignment across the organization.

How you’ll make an impact

• Lead and drive the development of technology and platform for the company's Data Lake needs, ensure the functional richness, reliability, performance, and flexibility of the Data Lake Platform.

• Help design the architecture and lead the implementation of the Data Lake platform and services.

• Challenge the status quo and hold a high bar to drive for better and better technical solutions to effectively serve all the needs in the broad risk area of Wex. 

• Guide your team to leverage data and/or AI technology or tools in your design and development for high productivity and better solution quality. Show strong thought leadership and influence your peers in this area.

• Closely partner with the other senior engineers across the organizations at Wex to deeply understand the business needs and jointly come up with technical solutions to serve these needs effectively. Demonstrate strong thought leadership and partnership.

• Partner closely with information security teams to ensure the security and privacy of data, implementing encryption and access controls as required.

• Partner with solutions architecture and LOB product and engineering orgs on integrations of the Data Lake Platform with their products/systems, and ensure reliable and performed execution.

• Engage with external partners and vendors to evaluate technologies and services that complement the company’s Data Lake strategy.

• Create, prioritize, communicate, manage, and execute roadmaps, project plans, and commitments.

• Report on the status of development, quality, operations, and system performance to management and partners.

• Drive the technical vision and strategy of Data Lake to serve the business needs for the near term and long term. A close partnership with the Data Engineering teams and the operational reporting teams of applications 

• Set a high bar, and provide technical guidance and effective training & mentorship to the engineering teams in your group, including engineering principles, skills, and best practices. Uphold strong DORA metrics across the org. Foster an environment of continuous learning and innovation. Build an inclusive, productive, innovative, and engaging Risk group, including attracting high talents from the industry.
  Guide the leaders in your group to do the same.

• Set clear, measurable quality goals for your group in a data-driven way

• Partner with the security org and SRE org to ensure continuous improvement and meeting of security requirements, SLOs, and error budget.

• Take strong financial responsibility for your team.

• Hold yourself and your team accountable for delivering quality results using defined OKRs.

• Advise Senior Leadership team on highly complex situations that impact our organization and then lead teams through the initiative, driving excellent quality results and achieving defined OKRs across the organization.

• Provide strategic thought leadership on business initiatives using your deep technical and business industry expertise.

Experience you’ll bring

• A technically deep and innovative Software Engineer leader able to act and deliver to the business needs.

• Have 15-20 years of software design and development experience at a large scale.

• Strong software development skills in his or her chosen programming language, but ready and willing to learn and program in Java and Python.

• Broad understanding of Data Lakehouse formats like Apache Hudi, Apache Iceberg or Delta Lake is a big plus.