Principal Data Engineer

Serv, a global executive recruitment partner, is hiring on behalf of our client Virtual Intros for a Principal Data Engineer. Join the Team: Virtual Intros is building the intelligence layer for meaningful, privacy-first connection across people, companies, and communities, turning real-time engagement into measurable business value. The platform is supported by modern architecture including microservices, Infrastructure as Code, and distributed systems, and is now evolving to include a secure, multi-tenant data foundation that powers analytics, reporting, and AI-enabled capabilities at enterprise scale. To learn more please visit: Not provided Position Responsibilities: This role owns the design and delivery of the company's data platform, setting architectural direction while remaining hands-on in building the systems that power analytics, reporting, and AI capabilities. You will define data standards, ensure tenant-safe design, and build a scalable, trustworthy data foundation used across the business. This role includes:

• Define and own the foundational data architecture including data models, relationships, and source-of-truth systems
• Establish data contracts and guide the evolution from operational data to analytical and AI-ready systems
• Design and build end-to-end data pipelines from ingestion through serving layers
• Implement scalable ingestion from relational databases, object storage, event streams, and SaaS APIs
• Own transformation layer architecture including modeling, testing, documentation, and CI/CD integration
• Establish data quality, observability, schema management, and pipeline reliability standards
• Design multi-tenant data models, storage layouts, and access patterns
• Implement tenant-aware security including row-level and column-level controls
• Define data lifecycle management including retention, archival, and deletion strategies
• Establish data governance standards including classification, lineage, cataloging, and auditability
• Partner with security and compliance teams to ensure privacy and regulatory alignment
• Design serving layers for analytics, reporting, and internal business use
• Prepare data systems to support AI-enabled capabilities including embeddings and advanced data structures
• Evaluate and implement graph-based data models where appropriate
• Mentor engineers and provide architectural oversight across internal and external contributors
• Lead vendor evaluation and manage external data partners to ensure alignment with standards
• Drive data literacy and data-informed decision making across the organization

• 10+ years of experience in data engineering with principal-level ownership

• Proven experience owning foundational data architecture in production environments

• Strong experience with modern data pipelines across batch and streaming systems

• Deep expertise in data modeling for both operational and analytical use cases

• Proven experience designing multi-tenant data systems and isolation strategies

• Strong understanding of data governance, privacy, and sensitive data handling

• Advanced SQL skills and experience with modern processing frameworks such as Spark, Flink, or equivalent

• Experience with AWS data services including S3, Glue, Kinesis, RDS, or similar

• Experience ingesting and modeling data from document-based systems such as MongoDB

• Experience working with graph data models and graph databases such as Neo4j or Amazon Neptune

• Experience with modern cloud data warehouses such as Snowflake or Redshift

• Experience with data transformation tools such as dbt including testing and CI/CD

• Experience building ingestion pipelines from CDC, object storage, and streaming systems

• Experience managing or governing external data vendors and partners

• Experience communicating data strategy and tradeoffs to executive stakeholders Preferred Experience

• Experience supporting AI, machine learning, or embedding-based data use cases

• Experience with data cataloging, lineage, and governance tools

• Background in enterprise or regulated data environments

• Experience with real-time and event-driven data architectures

• Experience in high-growth or startup environments scaling toward enterprise Our Ideal Teammate Is Someone Who:

• Is proactive and accountable

• Thinks strategically and executes consistently

• Communicates with clarity and confidence

• Brings a positive, growth-oriented mindset

• Is highly organized and dependable

• Embraces learning and feedback

• Cares deeply about doing great work Location: Remote