The Role
Lead the technical direction for a cloud-native data engineering platform, architecting data pipelines and mentoring engineers while ensuring data governance and performance optimization.
Summary Generated by Built In
The Role
As a Principal Software Engineer on our Data Feed Platform team (Direct - Data & Research), you will partner with product owners and engineering teams to shape the technical direction of our data engineering capability. Together, you will migrate our file-based products to a unified, cloud-native data platform - architecting highly governed data pipelines, feed generation systems, and large-scale data delivery infrastructure.
This is a senior individual contributor role reporting to the Director of Technology. You will serve as a technical thought leader for a team of engineers - owning the end-to-end data platform architecture, from ingestion and transformation through to client-facing data products. You will define best practices for data governance, data modeling, performance optimization, and data reliability across the entire product lifecycle, while mentoring engineers and fostering continuous improvement within the data engineering discipline.
If your background is in data engineering, data platform development, or building production-grade data systems at scale, this role was designed for you.
Location: Toronto, ON (Hybrid-4 days in Office)
We intentionally prioritize in-person collaboration, as we've found it strengthens creative quality, alignment, and team momentum.
Job Responsibilities
Qualifications
Nice to Have (Experience & Tools)
Base Salary Compensation Range
$112,583.00-162,125.00
Incentive Target Percentage
20% Annual
Morningstar's hybrid work environment gives you the opportunity to collaborate in-person each week as we've found that we're at our best when we're purposely together on a regular basis. In most of our locations, our hybrid work model is four days in-office each week. A range of other benefits are also available to enhance flexibility as needs change. No matter where you are, you'll have tools and resources to engage meaningfully with your global colleagues.
100_MstarResCanad Morningstar Research, Inc. (Canada) Legal Entity
As a Principal Software Engineer on our Data Feed Platform team (Direct - Data & Research), you will partner with product owners and engineering teams to shape the technical direction of our data engineering capability. Together, you will migrate our file-based products to a unified, cloud-native data platform - architecting highly governed data pipelines, feed generation systems, and large-scale data delivery infrastructure.
This is a senior individual contributor role reporting to the Director of Technology. You will serve as a technical thought leader for a team of engineers - owning the end-to-end data platform architecture, from ingestion and transformation through to client-facing data products. You will define best practices for data governance, data modeling, performance optimization, and data reliability across the entire product lifecycle, while mentoring engineers and fostering continuous improvement within the data engineering discipline.
If your background is in data engineering, data platform development, or building production-grade data systems at scale, this role was designed for you.
Location: Toronto, ON (Hybrid-4 days in Office)
We intentionally prioritize in-person collaboration, as we've found it strengthens creative quality, alignment, and team momentum.
Job Responsibilities
- Lead and provide deep technical direction across data feeds and the data engineering function, guiding architectural decisions across platforms.
- Architect the platform consolidation strategy, migrating legacy feed products onto a unified, governed, cloud-native architecture.
- Design and implement scalable data delivery mechanisms for both file-based feeds and modern marketplace distribution platforms.
- Drive DataOps maturity by establishing comprehensive data quality, monitoring, alerting, and CI/CD practices across the platform.
- Influence technical strategy across teams by communicating architectural vision to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Qualifications
- Experience: 9+ years of experience in data engineering, data platforms, or distributed systems.
- Cloud Expertise: Proven track record building and optimizing large-scale data pipelines on a major cloud platform (AWS preferred; Azure or GCP also accepted).
- Data Processing at Scale: Strong experience with distributed or high-performance compute engines for large-scale data transformation. Familiarity with frameworks such as Spark/PySpark, DuckDB, or similar modern engines, and the ability to evaluate trade-offs between them for different workloads.
- SQL & Programming: Expert proficiency in SQL (Postgres, SQL Server, etc) and strong development skills in Python (Python 3.x).
- Data Warehousing: Strong hands-on experience with modern cloud data warehouses (e.g., Snowflake, Databricks, Redshift).
- Technical Leadership: Demonstrated ability to influence engineering direction without direct management authority, mentor engineers, and drive alignment across teams.
- Deployment: Experience with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes).
- Cloud Storage: Hands-on experience with cloud object storage (AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage, or Google Cloud Storage).
Nice to Have (Experience & Tools)
- Architecture: Knowledge of data lake and lakehouse architecture, including the implementation and use of open table formats like Delta Lake and Apache Iceberg.
- Domain Knowledge: Previous experience in highly regulated or financial services industries with stringent data quality and delivery SLA requirements.
- AI-Assisted Development: Experience using agentic coding tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor) to accelerate development workflows.
Base Salary Compensation Range
$112,583.00-162,125.00
Incentive Target Percentage
20% Annual
Morningstar's hybrid work environment gives you the opportunity to collaborate in-person each week as we've found that we're at our best when we're purposely together on a regular basis. In most of our locations, our hybrid work model is four days in-office each week. A range of other benefits are also available to enhance flexibility as needs change. No matter where you are, you'll have tools and resources to engage meaningfully with your global colleagues.
100_MstarResCanad Morningstar Research, Inc. (Canada) Legal Entity
Skills Required
- 9+ years of experience in data engineering
- Proven track record building data pipelines on a major cloud platform
- Strong experience with distributed compute engines for data transformation
- Expert proficiency in SQL and strong development skills in Python
- Strong experience with modern cloud data warehouses
- Ability to influence engineering direction and mentor engineers
- Experience with containerization
- Experience with cloud object storage
What the Team is Saying
Anna
Team Lead of Software Engineering
Upasna
Software Engineer, Data Collections - AI R&D
Saurabh
Senior Software Engineer
Wendell
Head of Sales, Institutional Equity Research
Raaghavendar
Associate Software Engineer
Jeff
Head of Technology and Product
Morningstar Compensation & Benefits Highlights
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — A recurring paid sabbatical combined with flexible time off in North America and regionally set PTO provides substantial time-away flexibility. Paid volunteer days further broaden the time-off offering.
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Parental & Family Support — A global minimum of paid parental leave for primary and secondary caregivers, along with paid caregiving leave, signals strong family support. Adoption-assistance reimbursement adds another layer of care for growing families.
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Retirement Support — Retirement programs include employer matching or fixed contributions and free access to Morningstar retirement-planning tools. These elements support long-term savings alongside the broader total-rewards package.
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The Company
What We Do
At Morningstar, we believe in building great products in-house in a highly collaborative, agile environment where we focus on technical excellence, the user experience, and continuous improvement. Our technologists represent a range of skills and experience levels, but they all view their work as a craft and push technology’s boundaries.
Why Work With Us
Imagining big things is in our blood -- it's transformed us from a company with just a few employees in 1984 to a leading independent investment research company with a worldwide presence today. As of April 2020, we acquired Sustainalytics to drive long-term meaningful outcomes for investors in the ESG space. Join us on this exciting journey!
Gallery
Morningstar Offices
Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
Typical time on-site:
3 days a week
