Sony Interactive Entertainment · 1 day ago
Staff Data Engineer
United States, San Mateo, CA
Full-time
Onsite
Lead/Staff
$216K/yr - $324K/yr
10+ years expSony Interactive Entertainment is a global leader in entertainment, producing the PlayStation family of products and services. The Staff Data Engineer will lead the design and evolution of large-scale data platforms, providing technical leadership and architectural direction across the data ecosystem.
Consumer GoodsMusicVideo Games
Responsibilities
Lead the design and evolution of large-scale batch and real-time data platforms using Apache Spark, Flink, and Databricks
Define streaming and event-driven architectures (low-latency, exactly-once, high-throughput) using Flink and Scala
Set architectural standards for data reliability, scalability, observability, and cost efficiency
Own end-to-end system design for mission-critical data products, from ingestion to consumption
Build and maintain high-performance data pipelines in Scala and Python for both batch and streaming workloads
Develop real-time processing jobs (windowing, stateful processing, joins) using Flink
Optimize Spark jobs for performance, cost, and data correctness on Databricks
Implement robust data quality checks, schema evolution, and fault tolerance
Drive best practices for CI/CD, automated testing, and deployment of data pipelines
Establish monitoring, alerting, and SLAs for data systems
Lead efforts in capacity planning, performance tuning, and cost optimization
Partner with SRE / Platform teams on reliability, scaling, and incident response
Ensure code is fully scalable, maintainable, and performant
Work closely with product managers, analytics, ML, and backend teams to translate business requirements into scalable data solutions
Enable downstream use cases including analytics, reporting, experimentation, and machine learning
Influence data modeling and contract design to ensure long-term platform sustainability
Work proactively to address project requirements, and articulate issues and challenges with enough lead time to address project delivery risk
Mentor senior and mid-level data engineers; raise the technical bar across the organization
Lead technical reviews, design discussions, and post-incident analyses
Influence data engineering strategy across multiple teams or domains
Act as a go-to expert for streaming systems, Spark optimization, and distributed data processing
Ensure data platforms adhere to security, privacy, and compliance requirements
Define best practices for data access control, lineage, and auditing
Drive standardization around data formats, schemas, and lifecycle management
Qualification
Required
BS Degree in Engineering or Masters, Computer Science or equivalent experience
3-5+ years in a technical leadership or staff-level role (design ownership, mentoring, architecture decisions)
10-12+ years of hands-on experience building and operating large-scale data pipelines and platforms
10-12+ years of relevant industry experience, including ownership of complex, high-impact data systems used at scale
10-12+ years of experience in database development, programming (Scala, Python) design, and analysis
10-12+ years of experience with distributed framework like Spark, Flink
5-7+ years of experience with streaming services – Flink, Kafka
10-12+ years of experience with data and ETL programming (Databricks, Ab Initio)
7-10+ years of experience with AWS services (EKS, S3, EC2, Kinesis, DynamoDB, Glue, Deequ, etc)
7-10+ years of experience in SQL and a variety of database technologies – Snowflake, Teradata and Oracle
Experience in designing and architecting medium to complex systems, well versed with design standards & framework
Expertise in data modeling for analytics and operational use cases
Experience with data lakes / lakehouse architectures (e.g., Delta Lake)
Strong understanding of schema evolution, data versioning, and data governance
Experience with automation, configuration management, orchestration, enterprise schedulers
Recognized as a technical authority in data engineering within one or more domains (batch, streaming, lakehouse, analytics platforms)
Deep hands-on expertise with Scala, Python, Spark, Flink, and Databricks, applied to production systems at SIE scale
Strong understanding of distributed systems design, trade-offs, and failure modes
Ability to independently design complex, ambiguous systems with long-term sustainability in mind
Demonstrates end-to-end ownership of critical data platforms or services, from design through production operations
Drives engineering best practices for reliability, performance, cost efficiency, and data correctness
Anticipates risks and proactively addresses scalability, operational, and data quality concerns
Holds a high operational bar, ensuring systems meet SLAs and business expectations
Leads or significantly influences architecture and design decisions across teams or programs
Sets technical direction and standards for data platforms, pipelines, and tooling
Evaluates and introduces new technologies when they provide clear business or platform value
Ensures architectural decisions align with SIE platform, security, and compliance standards
Works effectively across multiple teams, disciplines, and organizations (product, analytics, ML, platform, finance)
Translates business and product strategy into scalable data solutions that enable revenue, engagement, and operational insights
Acts as a trusted technical partner for stakeholders beyond the immediate team
Mentors senior and mid-level engineers; raises the overall technical bar
Leads design reviews, technical forums, and incident postmortems
Influences outcomes through technical credibility, data-driven decision-making, and clear communication
Models SIE engineering values and best practices
Establishes standards for monitoring, alerting, observability, and on-call readiness
Drives improvements in CI/CD, automation, and developer productivity for data engineering
Champions cost-awareness and efficiency across data platforms
Benefits
Medical
Dental
Vision
Matching 401(k)
Paid time off
Wellness program
Coveted employee discounts for Sony products
Company
Sony Interactive Entertainment
Sony Interactive Entertainment is responsible for the PlayStation brand and family of products and services.
10001+ employees
H1B Sponsorship
Sony Interactive Entertainment has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (290)
2024 (258)
2023 (208)
2022 (279)
2021 (210)
2020 (213)
Funding
Current Stage
Late StageLeadership Team
Ben King
SVP, Direct-to-Consumer, Sony Interactive Entertainment / Playstation
Kiichiro Urata
SVP, Head of Japan Asia Partner Development & Relations / member of the Board of Directors
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