Sr SWE, Data Lake Engineering

About the Team/Role

As a Sr SWE of Data Lake Engineering, this technologist will help with the design and implementation of the Data Lake platform (supporting both GenAI and traditional AI/ML technology and applications), AI model productionalization (E2E AI/ML model production lifecycle: AI/ML model development, deployment, monitoring, refresh, etc), DataLake, and related technology, systems, and tools. He or she will drive the technology development and architecture in these areas to ensure the platforms, systems, tools, models, and services generated from this team are technically sound with strong security, quality, reliability, usability, scalability, performance, efficiency, and operability to serve the fast growing needs of Wex and customers. It’s important to balance the near term and long term needs. 

This is a fantastic opportunity for a highly motivated and passionate software engineer to apply deep expertise and rich experience in the Data Lake and related areas to develop technology, platforms, and services, and apply them to multiple lines of business with a big customer base to generate real business impact in a fast growing commerce platform and payment tech company during its technology transformation stage to meet high customer demands. At the same time, you will learn and grow your career by solving large scale and complex problems.

This Sr SWE will have technical ownership of WEX’s Data Lake platform/infrastructure & service technology implementations, including but not limited to architecture, technical direction, engineering best practice, and quality/compliance. This also includes proper and effective architectural integration with other platforms, products, and services across the company. This leader will work closely with team members of the AI and Data Lake Engineering teams.

The vision behind Wex’s Data Lake is to create a unified, scalable, and intelligent data infrastructure that empowers our organization to unlock the full potential of our data. At its core, the Data Lake is designed to serve as the foundation for modern data management, enabling us to ingest, store, process, and analyze vast amounts of diverse data from across the enterprise. This vision is centered on three primary goals: data democratization, agility and scalability, and advanced insights and innovation including fully harvesting the power of AI technology.

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 Sr 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

• Help with 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 able to act and deliver to the business needs.

• 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.

• Demonstrable experience in Spark programming

• Experience with Spark on DBT with AWS Glue or Apache Polaris is a plus 

• Broad understanding of cloud architecture tools and services, such as S3, EMR, Kubernetes, Lambda functions. Experience in AWS and Azure is highly desirable.

• Deep technically; hands-on in architecture design, development, deployment, and production operation; familiar with agile software development and modern development tools and frameworks; holding strong engineering principles including automation and quality as well as best practices with a high bar. Extensive experience in full software development life cycle E2E including in production monitoring.

• Rich experience and deep expertise in the areas of Big Data and large scale data platforms, especially in Data Lake.

• Highly experienced and deep understanding of CI/CD automation.

• Rich experience in combined engineering practice and agile development. Experienced in leading and guiding teams for effective development using this approach.

• Excellent analytical skills; Capability in identifying and resolving complex problems.

• An understanding of and experience in payment organizations is a plus. 

• A mentor to individual contributors of different seniority levels and expertise.

• Ability to encourage and foster a culture of visibility and transparency across teams

• Strong written and verbal communication skills

• Strong philosophy of continuous improvement

• Bachelor degree in Computer Science or a related field. A higher degree in a related field is a plus.