Data Platform Squad
Role details
Job location
Tech stack
Job description
We're seeking a Staff Software Engineer to strengthen our real estate MLS data platform squad. You will build robust data pipelines and backend services that power:
-
High-quality MLS and property data across 400+ feeds
-
Property discovery and search on agent websites
-
Personalized listing recommendations and other data-driven features
-
Conversational and operational AI agents that streamline internal workflows
-
The evaluation and monitoring infrastructure that keeps these systems improving over time This role sits at the intersection of backend engineering, data infrastructure, and AI-powered products. Who is the Data Platform Squad? We make sure clean, reliable MLS listing records and user click-stream data are always available to our products and customers. Our current team-a mix of data engineers and software engineers-owns the entire listing pipeline: ingestion, transformation, and normalization across 400+ MLS feeds and other sources. We also extend the platform to capture user-activity data for user-facing features such as personalized listing recommendations, and we build AI agents that automate feed onboarding and listing-issue triage, reducing manual effort for internal teams and clients and shortening the path from data to business impact. What You'll Do Technical leadership & architecture
-
Own the end-to-end architecture for MLS and property data: streaming and batch pipelines, microservices, storage layers, and APIs
-
Design and evolve event-driven, Kafka-based data flows that power listing ingestion, enrichment, recommendations, and AI use cases
-
Drive technical design reviews, set engineering best practices, and make high-quality tradeoffs around reliability, performance, and cost Backend, data & platform engineering
-
Design, build, and operate backend services (Python or Java) that expose listing, property, and recommendation data via robust APIs and microservices
-
Implement scalable data processing with Spark or Flink on EMR (or similar), orchestrated via Airflow and running on Kubernetes where applicable
-
Champion observability (metrics, tracing, logging) and operational excellence (alerting, runbooks, SLOs, on-call participation) for data and backend services Streaming & batch data pipelines
-
Build and maintain high-volume, schema-evolving streaming and batch pipelines that ingest and normalize MLS and third-party data
-
Ensure data quality, lineage, and governance are built into the platform from the start-supporting analytics, AI/ML, and customer-facing features
-
Partner with analytics engineering and data science to make data discoverable and usable (e.g., semantic layers, documentation, self-service tooling) AI agents & data products
-
Collaborate with ML/AI engineers to design and scale AI agents that automate MLS feed onboarding, listing discrepancy triage, and other operational workflows
-
Work with frameworks such as PydanticAI, LangChain, or similar to integrate LLM-based agents into our data and service architecture
-
Help define and implement evaluation, logging, and feedback loops so these agents and data-driven products continuously improve Cross-functional impact & mentorship
-
Collaborate closely with Product, Engineering, and Operations to shape the roadmap for our data platform, MLS capabilities, and AI-powered experiences
-
Translate ambiguous business and customer problems into clear technical strategies and phased delivery plans
-
Mentor and unblock other engineers; elevate the overall level of technical decision-making on the team via pairing, reviews, and design guidance What You'll Bring
Requirements
-
10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including owning production systems end-to-end
-
Significant experience working with data-intensive or distributed systems at scale (high volume, high availability)
-
Prior experience in a senior or staff/lead role where you influenced architecture, standards, and technical direction Core technical skills
-
Strong programming skills in Python or Java, with experience building microservices and APIs (REST/GraphQL) Hands-on experience with Apache Kafka or similar event/messaging platforms (Kinesis, Pub/Sub, etc.)
-
Deep experience with:
-
Spark or Flink for large-scale data processing, across streaming and batch pipelines (on EMR or similar big-data compute)
-
Airflow (or equivalent orchestration tools)
-
Kubernetes for running data/compute workloads
-
Strong SQL and data modeling skills; solid understanding of ETL/ELT patterns, data warehousing concepts, and performance tuning
-
Experience building on AWS (preferred) or another major cloud provider, with a good grasp of cost, reliability, and security tradeoffs AI agent experience
-
Experience building or integrating AI agents into production workflows (e.g., internal tools, support automation, operational triage, or data workflows)
-
Familiarity with frameworks such as PydanticAI, LangGraph, Claude Code or similar, and how they interact with backend services, vector stores, and LLM APIs
-
Comfort working with logs, telemetry, and evaluation metrics to monitor, debug, and iteratively improve AI-driven systems Leadership & collaboration
-
Demonstrated ability to lead technical initiatives across teams, from idea to production (alignment, design, implementation, rollout)
-
Track record of mentoring other engineers and raising the bar on code quality, testing, and design
-
Strong communication skills; able to clearly explain complex technical decisions to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders
-
Customer and product mindset: you care about how the data and services you build improve the end-user and client experience, not just the internals Nice to Have
-
Experience with any of:
-
Iceberg, Hive, or other table formats/data lake technologies
-
Snowflake, Athena, Redshift, or other cloud data warehouses
-
dbt or similar transformation frameworks
-
Data quality / observability tools (e.g., Great Expectations, Monte Carlo, Datafold)
-
Vector databases / retrieval (e.g., LanceDB, Pinecone, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch)
-
Background in real estate, marketplaces, or other domains where data quality and freshness are highly visible to customers
-
Prior experience in a startup or high-growth environment where you've built or significantly evolved a data platform