Principal Engineer - Data & Platform

What You Will Own

· Define the target data architecture, domain ownership model, and transition away from unrestricted shared-database access.

· Create migration patterns for schema separation, data replication, synchronization, reconciliation, and cutover.

· Guide transaction-boundary decisions, consistency models, event flows, and failure recovery across services.

· Protect reporting, auditability, historical access, and client integrations during data migration.

· Establish standards for data contracts, lineage, retention, privacy, quality, and controlled access.

· Review high-risk data changes and lead proofs of concept for difficult migration or scale concerns.

· Mentor Engineering Leads and senior engineers in data architecture and distributed data trade-offs.

What You Bring

· 12+ years in platform, backend, or data-intensive engineering with senior technical leadership experience.

· Deep relational database architecture and SQL performance expertise; SQL Server experience is strongly preferred.

· Experience decomposing a shared database or monolithic data model into owned domains incrementally.

· Strong knowledge of transactions, consistency, messaging, change data capture, reconciliation, and data migration.

· Experience with high-volume processing, operational reporting, audit controls, and production data safety.

· Working knowledge of Java and Spring Boot systems and the operational needs of distributed services.

· Ability to lead through design, code, prototypes, reviews, and written technical decisions.

What Sets You Apart

· You have led a data or platform center of excellence and converted research into production standards.

· You have modernized data architecture while preserving live reporting and client operations.

· You know when a dedicated data pipeline, specialist engineer, or platform investment is justified by sustained demand.

Success in This Role

· Each modernized domain has explicit data ownership and controlled access boundaries.

· Migrations include reconciliation, rollback, observability, and reporting continuity from the start.

· The platform reduces shared-database coupling without creating inconsistent or duplicated sources of truth.