Principal Data Engineer, People Data
Apache Airflow
Big Data
Bigdata
Cloud Data Warehouse
Cloud Platform
Cloud Platforms
Data
Data Analysis
Data Analytics
Data Architecture
Data Build Tool
Data Engineer
Data Engineering
Data Engineering Lead
Data Integration
Data Lake
Data Lakehouse
Data Management
Data Modeling
Data Operations
Data Pipeline
Data Pipelines
Data Platform
Data Processing
Data Warehouse
Data Warehousing
Database
Databases
Databricks
ETL
Snowflake
SQL
Job Description
Okta’s Data and Insights team is hiring a Principal Data Engineer to architect, build, and maintain scalable data solutions for People (HR) data. This hybrid role in San Francisco, CA partners closely with People teams and cross-functional data and product stakeholders to keep data available and trustworthy across the employee lifecycle. You will help establish the organization’s data reference architecture while enabling consistent access to HR data at scale.
What you’ll do
- Design, build, and evolve high-scale data solutions that act as organizational reference architecture and make data access simpler across the company.
- Create data quality frameworks including monitoring, anomaly detection, and alerting, with governance, lineage tracking, and change management rigor for externally reported numbers.
- Drive organization-wide adoption of consistent data modeling patterns, naming conventions, documentation norms, and metric governance standards.
- Lead cross-functional technical initiatives across data verticals to accelerate delivery and harden data systems.
- Operate effectively in ambiguity by making sound technical decisions that balance near-term delivery with long-term infrastructure investment.
- Champion Data Contracts by implementing data contracts and schema evolution practices to improve reliability across global product teams.
- Mentor and scale the team by raising the technical bar, mentoring senior engineers, leading cross-functional task forces, and strengthening a culture of engineering excellence and data-driven decision making.
- Stay current with the data landscape by adopting and advocating for emerging technologies and practices to shape the team’s long-term direction.
What you bring
- 10+ years in data engineering, with a track record in a senior or lead capacity. Experience with Federal government compliance and security requirements is highly desirable.
- Expert-level skills in SQL, ETL/ELT tools such as Airflow and dbt, and MPP databases like Snowflake and Redshift.
- Extensive hands-on experience with AWS services including S3, Lambda, EMR, ECR, and EKS.
- Deep expertise in HR data, including candidate lifecycle, employee records, compensation, and organizational data, plus experience designing data models for recruiting analytics, engagement signals, and workforce planning metrics.
- Bonus: familiarity with Workday data structures.
- Experience building and maintaining batch and realtime pipelines using technologies such as Spark and Kafka.
- Deep experience with modern lakehouse and warehouse architectures (including Databricks and Snowflake) and modern file formats such as Iceberg and Delta.
- Demonstrated ability to integrate AI tools to optimize and redesign workflows with measurable impact (for example efficiency gains and quality improvements).
- A proven record of hands-on collaboration with Data Science, Business, and Product teams.
Technologies
SQL, Airflow, dbt, Snowflake, Redshift, AWS S3, AWS Lambda, AWS EMR, AWS ECR, AWS EKS, Spark, Kafka, Databricks, Iceberg, Delta
Compensation
USD 197,000 - 270,600 per year.
The Okta Experience
- Supporting Your Well-Being
- Driving Social Impact
- Developing Talent and Fostering Connection + Community
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