WEX · 12 hours ago
Sr Staff - Data Platform Engineer
United States
Full-time
Remote
Senior Level, Lead/Staff
$166K/yr - $204K/yr
15+ years expWEX is seeking a Sr. Staff Data Platform Engineer to be the primary architect and visionary for their core data infrastructure. This role involves building high-performance engines and frameworks to enable other engineers to work more efficiently while ensuring the data platform remains a competitive advantage.
Financial ServicesFinTechPaymentsSoftware
Responsibilities
Architectural Sovereignty: Define the 3-5 year technical roadmap for the Data Lakehouse. You aren't just using tools; you are deciding how storage, compute, and metadata layers (e.g., Apache Polaris, Unity Catalog or Datahub Catalog) interact at an elemental level
Platform-as-a-Product: Build internal SDKs, CLI tools, and automated orchestration frameworks. Your goal is to abstract away cloud complexity via Control Planes and Custom Operators, allowing Data Engineers to focus on business logic rather than infrastructure boilerplate
Internal R&D: Prototype and benchmark emerging technologies (e.g., specialized Spark extensions, or Rust-based data accelerators) to keep the platform at the bleeding edge of performance and cost-efficiency
Global Governance & Security: Architect "compliance-by-design" systems. Automate data lineage, PII masking, and fine-grained access control across petabyte-scale environments using Open Policy Agent (OPA) or similar frameworks without sacrificing developer velocity
Engineering Excellence & Influence: Set the gold standard for code quality and system design across the company. You will lead Cross-Functional Architecture Reviews and serve as the final escalation point for the most complex system outages or performance bottlenecks
Organizational Mentorship: Beyond individual mentoring, you will foster an "Engineering Community," influencing the hiring bar and professional development paths for the entire data engineering organization
Qualification
Required
15+ years in software engineering and distributed systems, with at least 4 years in a principal or staff-level capacity leading platform-scale initiatives
Expert-level proficiency in Java or Scala (JVM tuning is a must) and Python
Deep experience building extensible frameworks—you have built libraries, APIs, or platforms used by other developers, not just end-user applications
Advanced Docker Mastery: Deep understanding of container internals, multi-stage builds for polyglot environments, and security hardening (e.g., distroless images, rootless containers)
Advanced mastery of Kubernetes (EKS) for stateful workloads
Experience building custom CRDs (Custom Resource Definitions) and Operators to automate the lifecycle of data engines
Proven ability to architect across AWS and Azure, building cloud-agnostic abstractions that allow workloads to migrate or burst across providers (e.g., leveraging S3/ADLS Gen2 and EMR/HDInsight frameworks)
Deep internal knowledge of Apache Iceberg, Hudi, or Delta Lake (metadata management, manifest files, and compaction strategies)
Experience contributing to or deeply customizing open-source data projects (e.g., Spark, Trino, Flink)
Expertise in Terraform or Pulumi at an enterprise scale
Experience integrating LLMs and AI agents into the software development lifecycle (SDLC) to automate code reviews, generate unit tests, and perform automated root-cause analysis of system failures
Ability to architect the infrastructure required to support AI Agent development by enabling vector database integration
Proven track record of 'leading by influence'—driving adoption of new technologies across multiple autonomous teams
Ability to communicate complex architectural trade-offs (e.g., 'Latency vs. Consistency' or 'Build vs. Buy') to C-suite executives and junior engineers alike
Preferred
Experience with Rust or Go for systems-level tooling or sidecars is a major advantage
Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science (Distributed Systems focus) preferred, or equivalent deep industry experience
Benefits
Health, dental and vision insurances
Retirement savings plan
Paid time off
Health savings account
Flexible spending accounts
Life insurance
Disability insurance
Tuition reimbursement
And more
Company
WEX
Wex is a financial technology service provider for fleet, travel and healthcare industries.
5001-10000 employees
H1B Sponsorship
WEX 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 (22)
2024 (10)
2023 (12)
2022 (20)
2021 (14)
2020 (18)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$900MKey Investors
Warburg Pincus
2025-02-25Post Ipo Debt· $500M
2020-06-30Post Ipo Equity· $90M
2020-06-30Post Ipo Debt· $310M
Leadership Team
Melissa Smith
Chair and Chief Executive Officer
Sachin Dhawan
Chief Technology Officer
Recent News
Morningstar.com
2026-01-22
2026-01-20
2026-01-20
Company data provided by crunchbase