Staff Engineer - Data Platform - AWS

At Early Warning, we’ve powered and protected the U.S. financial system for over thirty years with cutting-edge solutions like Zelle®, Paze℠, and so much more. As a trusted name in payments, we partner with thousands of institutions to increase access to financial services and protect transactions for hundreds of millions of consumers and small businesses.

Positions located in Scottsdale, San Francisco, Chicago, or New York follow a hybrid work model to allow for a more collaborative working environment.

Candidates responding to this posting must independently possess the eligibility to work in the United States, for any employer, at the date of hire. This position is ineligible for employment Visa sponsorship.

Overall Purpose

A Staff Data Platform Engineer formulates strategy for our data platform roadmap, works with the team to deliver on the planned roadmap utilizing automation to help build and maintain highly resilient and performant distributed data and middleware infrastructure. Architects, designs, develops, documents, tests, and debugs infrastructure automation code to build, maintain, and support infrastructure for our data and middleware platforms. Acts as a technical leader on the team, collaborates closely with the Architecture and other cross functional teams to ensure that the platform continues powering Early Warning products.

Essential Functions:

• Develops a data platform infrastructure strategy that tackles large, open-ended problems using forward-thinking approaches.
• Leads the architecture, design, prototyping, and implementation of data platform infrastructure, aligning with company’s technology strategy.
• Leads and collaborates effectively with other members of the team to deliver on the team’s backlog and ensure resilient data infrastructure. 
• Represents the data platform infrastructure team in cross-functional discussions, effectively presenting and defending technical solutions.
• Collaborates with stakeholders to capture requirements, provide updates, and manage risks or issues.
• Leads the creation and execution of a prioritized story backlog from design through production delivery, ensuring seamless execution.
• Ensures high availability, security, scalability, and resilience of data infrastructure, while optimizing performance, costs, and resource utilization.
• Owns observability, monitoring, and alerting to maintain platform health.
• Responsible for root cause analysis on incidents, ensuring a customer-first mindset in resolving issues.
• Implements and maintains policies, standards, and processes, ensuring compliance with regulatory and fiduciary requirements.
• Fosters a diverse, inclusive, and collaborative work environment, mentoring junior engineers and promoting best practices.
• Stays updated on industry trends, including IaC, cloud technologies, and distributed data infrastructure, leveraging training and proof of concepts to drive innovation.
• Supports the company’s commitment to risk management and protecting the integrity and confidentiality of systems and data.
• This above job description is not intended to be an all-inclusive list of duties and standards of the position. Incumbents will follow instructions and perform other related duties as assigned by their supervisor.

Minimum Qualifications

• Education or experience typically obtained through completion of a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, or related fields or equivalent professional experience.
• Minimum 10 or more years of relevant industry experience.
• Proven experience in designing, building, and managing data infrastructure using Infrastructure as Code (Iac) tools (e.g., Terraform, Ansible).
• Strong understanding of both on-premises and cloud infrastructure, particularly AWS.
• Proficiency in administering at least one NoSQL database, such as Aerospike, HBase, Amazon RedShift.
• Knowledge of data platforms and technologies, including Hadoop, Hbase, SOLR, Spark, and Kafka.
• Familiarity with monitoring tools and observability frameworks to ensure data infrastructure health and performance.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and version control systems such as Harness and Git.
• AWS Cloud Platform certification
• Strong problem-solving skills, attention to detail, and ability to work in collaborative environment.
• Strong commitment to risk management, security, and compliance.
• Ability to use critical thinking and leverage relationships to influence decisions.
• Background and drug screen.

Preferred Qualifications

• Hand on experience with AWS, Redshift, Kinesis, Glue and Lamda
• Strong background in managing scalable, secure, and resilient distributed data systems.
• Hands-on experience with automation, scripting (e.g. Python, Shell).
• Certification in a IaC tool (e.g., Terraform, Ansible) is a plus.
• Familiarity with containerization technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.
• FinTech experience is highly beneficial.

Physical Requirements

Early Warning works together in a highly collaborative office environment. Working conditions consist of a normal office environment. Work is primarily sedentary and requires extensive use of a computer and involves sitting for periods of approximately four hours. Work may require occasional standing, walking, kneeling, and reaching. Must be able to lift 10 pounds occasionally and/or negligible amount of force frequently. Requires visual acuity and dexterity to view, prepare, and manipulate documents and office equipment including personal computers. Requires the ability to communicate with internal and/or external customers.

Employee must be able to perform essential functions and physical requirements of position with or without reasonable accommodation.

The pay scale for this position in:

Phoenix, AZ in USD per year is: $145,000 - $165,000.

San Francisco, CA in USD per year is: $150,000 - $190,000.

This pay scale is subject to change and is not necessarily reflective of actual compensation that may be earned, nor a promise of any specific pay for any specific candidate, which is always dependent on legitimate factors considered at the time of job offer. Early Warning Services takes into consideration a variety of factors when determining a competitive salary offer, including, but not limited to, the job scope, market rates and geographic location of a position, candidate’s education, experience, training, and specialized skills or certification(s) in relation to the job requirements and compared with internal equity (peers). The business actively supports and reviews wage equity to ensure that pay decisions are not based on gender, race, national origin, or any other protected classes.

Additionally, candidates are eligible for a discretionary bonus, and benefits.

Some of the Ways We Prioritize Your Health and Happiness 

• Healthcare Coverage – Competitive medical (PPO/HDHP), dental, and vision plans as well as company contributions to your Health Savings Account (HSA) or pre-tax savings through flexible spending accounts (FSA) for commuting, health & dependent care expenses.
• 401(k) Retirement Plan – Featuring a 100% Company Safe Harbor Match on your first 6% deferral immediately upon eligibility.
• Paid Time Off – Unlimited Time Off for Exempt (salaried) employees, as well as generous PTO for Non-Exempt (hourly) employees, plus 11 paid company holidays and a paid volunteer day.
• 12 weeks of Paid Parental Leave
• Maven Family Planning – provides support through your Parenting journey including egg freezing, fertility, adoption, surrogacy, pregnancy, postpartum, early pediatrics, and returning to work.

And SO much more! We continue to enhance our program, so be sure to check our Benefits page here for the latest. Our team can share more during the interview process!

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Early Warning Services, LLC (“Early Warning”) considers for employment, hires, retains and promotes qualified candidates on the basis of ability, potential, and valid qualifications without regard to race, religious creed, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, protected veteran or disability status or any factor prohibited by law, and as such affirms in policy and practice to support and promote equal employment opportunity and affirmative action, in accordance with all applicable federal, state, and municipal laws. The company also prohibits discrimination on other bases such as medical condition, marital status or any other factor that is irrelevant to the performance of our employees.