Exactera · 5 hours ago
Lead Data Platform Engineer
San Diego, CA
Full-time
Onsite
Senior Level, Lead/Staff
5+ years expExactera is an AI-first tax technology company transforming how businesses manage corporate tax compliance. As a Lead Data Platform Engineer, you'll architect and implement a centralized data platform on Databricks, focusing on data governance, optimization, and enabling Data Engineers to build confidently on the platform.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)Financial ServicesInformation TechnologySoftware
Responsibilities
Architect and implement our centralized data platform on Databricks
Establish governance patterns using Unity Catalog
Optimize for cost and performance at scale
Enable existing Data Engineers to build confidently on the platform
Design data models and implement unified schemas across multiple disparate product lines
Design and implement multi-catalog governance strategy supporting data isolation, cross-product data sharing, and comprehensive lineage tracking across our product portfolio
Establish patterns for Z-ordering, compaction, and liquid clustering at multi-TB scale
Define table structures, partitioning strategies, and retention policies that balance query performance with storage costs
Build declarative pipeline patterns using Delta Live Tables
Create orchestration workflows for ingesting data from internal sources such as SQL databases and S3
Integrate with third party data sources such as ERP systems and external data providers with automated ingest, robust error handling and monitoring
Implement cost monitoring and optimization strategies
Establish data quality frameworks
Create self-service patterns enabling Data Engineers to work independently while maintaining governance standards
Lead the architecture for migrating multi-terabyte datasets from legacy systems to Databricks
Design Unity Catalog structures enabling secure data separation between product lines while allowing controlled cross-product analytics where appropriate
Build infrastructure that scales efficiently through intelligent caching, query optimization, and compute management strategies that avoid linear cost growth
Establish monitoring, alerting, and data quality validation ensuring the platform operates reliably as foundation for both analytics and AI workloads
Qualification
Required
Databricks Expertise (Required)
Unity Catalog: Production experience with multi-catalog governance, metastore design, and lineage tracking
Data Structuring: Experience designing and building unified schemas across multiple disparate product lines
Delta Lake: Expert-level experience with Z-ordering, compaction, liquid clustering, and performance tuning at multi-TB scale
Delta Live Tables: Strong hands-on experience building declarative ETL pipelines, including change data capture and expectations/constraints
Databricks Workflows: Experience with job orchestration, scheduling, and operational monitoring
Business Intelligence: Experience enabling company-wide analytics and reporting with modern business intelligence tools and maintaining source of truth data and metrics
PySpark & Databricks SQL: Strong proficiency for code review, performance tuning, and query optimization
5-8 years in data engineering or data platform roles, with 3+ years hands-on Databricks experience
Track record leading at least one significant platform build or migration project
AWS experience (S3, IAM, VPC) with ability to collaborate on infrastructure decisions
Infrastructure-as-code experience (Terraform preferred)
Demonstrated ability architecting data platforms from first principles and defending technical decisions
Strong written and verbal communication— document architecture decisions and present to both technical and business stakeholders
Preferred
Experience with financial data, accounting systems (NetSuite), or enterprise ERP platforms
Background building platforms that serve AI/ML workloads (experience preparing data for downstream ML consumption, RAG and retrieval, and LLMs
Understand advanced intelligence concepts such as relationship surfacing with knowledge graphs
Familiarity with data governance frameworks and compliance requirements for regulated industries
Benefits
Generous vacation policy and paid parental leave.
Comprehensive health plans with FSA and HSA options.
401(k) retirement plan.
Life and disability insurance coverage.
Supplemental benefits include dependent care savings plan, pet insurance, will preparation, and an employee assistance program.
Company
Exactera
Exactera is an innovative AI-powered corporate tax compliance solution provider.
51-200 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Exactera 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 (1)
Funding
Current Stage
Growth StageTotal Funding
$134MKey Investors
Insight Partners,Savant GrowthInsight PartnersKennet Partners
2023-07-17Series Unknown· $33M
2021-03-10Series Unknown· $55M
2019-09-24Series B· $40M
Leadership Team
Robert Schulte
Chief Executive Officer
Recent News
2025-07-01
Company data provided by crunchbase