Senior Data Engineer

Cybercrime is rising, reaching record highs in 2024. According to the FBI's IC3 report total losses exceeded $16 billion. With investment fraud and BEC scams at the forefront, the message is clear: the real estate sector remains a lucrative target for cybercriminals. At CertifID, we take this threat seriously and provide a secure platform that verifies the identities of parties involved in transactions, authenticates wire transfer instructions, and detects potential fraud attempts. Our technology is designed to mitigate risks and ensure that every transaction is conducted with confidence and peace of mind.

We know we couldn’t take on this challenge without our incredible team. We have been recognized as one of the Best Startups to Work for in Austin, made the Inc. 5000 list, and won Best Culture by Purpose Jobs two years in a row. We are guided by our core values and our vision of a world without wire fraud. We offer a dynamic work environment where you can contribute to meaningful impact and be part of a team dedicated to enhancing security and fighting fraud.

CertifID is the wire fraud prevention platform protecting real estate closings. Every transaction we secure generates data: identity signals, verification events, behavioral patterns, payment flows. That data is how we detect fraud, how our customers measure risk, and how the business operates. You will own the systems that make it trustworthy, fast, and useful.

What You'll Do
Data platform and pipeline engineering
Design, build, and operate the core data infrastructure: data lake, warehouse, orchestration, observability, and governance, using declarative configuration and infrastructure as code (Terraform or equivalent) so the platform is reproducible and auditable

Partner with platform and domain teams to design ingestion pipelines and implement declarative configuration for data sources across the stack

Architect the transformation layer: dimensional models, aggregation strategies, and incremental materialization patterns that balance query performance against pipeline cost at scale

Own streaming and near-real-time data flows for fraud signal propagation, transaction status events, and verification webhooks, with the reliability expectations those require

Build for scale: partition strategies, clustering, late-arriving data handling, and backfill patterns that hold up when data volume doubles

Business outcome ownership
Own the source-of-truth models for the metrics the business runs on: ARR, NRR, churn, transaction volume, fraud detection rates, customer health scores, and operational throughput

Make the numbers defensible: when a business leader challenges a metric, you can walk them through exactly how it is calculated, what is excluded, and why

Partner with Product, Finance, CS, and GTM to translate business questions into data models and help teams measure what actually matters

Engineering craft and standards
Write production-grade Python and SQL: modular, tested, version-controlled, and reviewable by someone who was not in the room when you wrote it

Implement CI/CD pipelines for data systems: automated testing, schema change detection, data contract validation, deployment gates, and cost optimization and performance tuning as ongoing practice, not one-time projects

What We're Looking For
Experience
6+ years in data engineering with primary, end-to-end ownership of a production data platform, not a supporting role on a large team

Direct experience designing and operating streaming or near-real-time pipelines (Kafka, Kinesis, Pub/Sub, Flink, or equivalent) at production scale, including debugging failures under load

Hands-on production experience with cloud-based data platforms (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Databricks, or equivalent) and a production-grade orchestrator (Airflow, Dagster, Prefect, or equivalent)

Technical depth
Expert SQL and distributed systems: window functions, recursive CTEs, query plan analysis, query concurrency management, and optimization strategies that go beyond adding an index

Strong Python for data engineering: production-quality pipeline code with error handling, idempotency, retry logic, and test coverage; Go is a meaningful plus

Dimensional modeling mastery: you understand the tradeoffs between normalized and denormalized designs, when SCDs are the right tool, and how incremental strategies affect downstream query semantics

Event-driven architecture fundamentals: exactly-once semantics, consumer group management, backpressure handling, offset management, and the operational realities of keeping a streaming pipeline healthy

Warehouse internals: clustering keys, materialized views, partition pruning, and cost optimization strategies that keep query costs from compounding as data volume grows

What Sets You Apart

You instrument, measure, and verify that your work produced the outcome it was supposed to

You make architectural decisions independently, communicate outwardly, and document the reasoning so the decision survives you

You have joined teams where the data was a mess, and you shipped before the situation was fully resolved, because waiting for perfection was not an option

What We Offer

Flexible vacation

12 company-paid holidays

10 paid sick days

No work on your birthday

Health, dental, and vision Insurance (including a $0 option)

401(k) with matching, and no waiting period

Equity

Life insurance

Generous parental paid leave

Wellness reimbursement of $300/year

Remote worker reimbursement of $300/year

Professional development reimbursement

Competitive pay

An award-winning culture

Not sure if you check all the boxes? Apply anyway!

We know that great talent comes in many forms, and we value potential just as much as experience. If you're excited about this role and believe you can grow into it, we’d love to hear from you. We’re looking for people who are eager to learn, adapt, and solve challenges—so if that sounds like you, don’t let a checklist hold you back!

Change doesn't happen overnight, and the same goes for us here at CertifID. We evolve collectively and individually as we grow by leaning into the core values that define us. As we grow, we embody GRIT—collectively and individually—to raise the bar and influence outcomes in everything we do. Guard the Customer - Raise the Bar - Influence Outcomes - Teamwork Wins