Job Summary
Ichor Strategies seeks a Principal Data Engineer to lead the data architecture of our nascent SaaS platform which connects companies to the communities they operate in so that they can understand different perspectives, build authentic relationships, and foster mutual success. The ideal candidate will have extensive experience in driving architecture, making individual code contributions, and evolving a prototype into a scalable, extensible data platform.
Ichor Strategies presents some rare opportunities for a Software Engineer to work at an organization that
- is an MBE-certified Black-owned business
- is truly mission-driven
- has a truly diverse staff and inclusive culture
- is one of Crain's top 100 best places to work in NY
Reporting to the Director of Engineering, this position is fully remote, with an option to work a hybrid schedule in one of our offices in Brooklyn, Chicago, or Atlanta if you prefer. This position requires a minimum 40-hour workweek and occasional evening and/or weekend work, depending upon the workload.
Duties & Responsibilities:
- Set architectural direction for the data systems that power our application, and help evolve those systems toward that architectural direction. This includes ingestion and processing pipelines, data storage layers including a robust multi-purpose data lake, and a data access layer including materialized views that are optimized for application performance
- Directly contribute code that is readable, maintainable, and thoroughly tested
- Incorporate theoretical and practical knowledge of non-functional requirements relevant to distributed data engineering such as scalability, availability, extensibility, testability, etc.
- Build prototypes and proofs of concepts as needed to aid in technical decision making
- Adhere to and advocate for software engineering best practices
- Work to improve and migrate existing code, making deliberate and thoughtful tradeoffs where necessary.
- Be independently responsible for the entire lifecycle of projects and systems, including design, development, and deployment
- Collaborate with data engineers, application engineers, and other stakeholders across the organization
- Break down complex projects into simple systems that can be built and maintained by less experienced engineers
- Be considered an expert by peers, recognized for high quality and quantity of hands-on technical contributions
- Mentor and assist other engineers via pair programming, code reviews, knowledge sharing presentations, etc.
- Improve productivity and velocity across the team by creating tooling, reusable components, streamlined processes, etc.
Education & Experience:
- 10+ years of experience as a professional Software Engineer
- 7+ years of experience working with distributed ingestion, processing, storage, and access of big data (bonus points for experience with AI/ML)
- 7+ years of experience leveraging tools and infrastructure provided by GCP, AWS, or Azure
- Experience at an early-stage startup taking a product from 0 to 1
Skills & Abilities:
- Deep knowledge and experience with architectures for modern data infrastructure including data lakes, data warehouses, ETL pipelines, physical and logical data formats, data processing systems, data reliability, security, governance, and performance
- Deep knowledge of different kinds of data stores (row-oriented, columnar, key/value, document, graph, etc.) and their use cases and tradeoffs
- Proficiency with various big data technologies including some of these: BigQuery, Redshift, Snowflake, Parquet, Avro, Beam, Spark, Flink, GCP Dataflow, AWS Glue, Azure Data Factory
- Expertise in Java (bonus points for experience with TypeScript)
- High standards and expectations for software that is thoughtfully and meticulously engineered
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
- Empathy for others
About Ichor
Ichor Strategies is a management consulting firm specializing in connecting businesses to the communities in which they operate to build impactful strategies that deliver tangible results. We are a trusted advisor to Fortune 100 companies, providing a combination of strategic communications, policy support, and relationships in urban communities.
We are a powerhouse team of passionate advisors and experts with a combination of business acumen and cultural fluency, operating at the intersection of urban communities and major corporations. Trusted by those organizations and communities alike, we are uniquely positioned to bridge gaps to progress and unlock powerful opportunities for mutual success.
A certified MBE, our diversity powers our ability to access all communities and understand nuances that others might miss. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, sex, disability, age, veteran status, and other protected status as required by applicable law.
