Senior Data Engineer

Who We Are

At Justworks, you’ll enjoy a welcoming and casual environment, great benefits, wellness program offerings, company retreats, and the ability to interact with and learn from leaders in the startup community. We work hard and care about our most prized asset - our people.

We’re helping businesses get off the ground by enabling them to focus on running their business. We solve HR issues. We’re data-driven and never stop iterating. If you’d like to work in a supportive, entrepreneurial environment, are interested in building something meaningful and having fun while doing it, we’d love to hear from you.

We're united by shared goals and shared motivations at Justworks. These are best summed up in our company values, which are reflected in our product and in our team.

Our Values

If this sounds like you, you’ll fit right in.

Department

Technology, Data & Analytics

About The Team

The Data & Analytics team is Justworks' data and AI center of excellence - a connected set of functions spanning business intelligence, data science, analytics engineering, platform data/ML engineering and AI builders. We've grown significantly over the last several years and continue to build momentum across the business, leveling up maturity in how we deliver insights, govern data, and enable the company to make better decisions. You'll find a highly collaborative & diverse group motivated by craft, shared learning, and a genuine commitment to growing our impact for customers while evolving how we work together for our people. Come build with us!

The Data Platform Engineering team sits at the core of this foundation, owning the pipelines, platform infrastructure, and reliability that every other DNA function depends on.

Who You Are

You love tackling complex data problems and thrive on building and maintaining large-scale batch and real-time data pipelines that directly impact business decisions. You take pride in creating trusted data assets and scalable infrastructure while collaborating closely with business and engineering partners. You have a strong sense of ownership, a big-picture mindset, and a bias for action toward delivering realistic and measurable outcomes.

As a Senior Data Engineer, you will shape the direction of the Data Platform Engineering team through the quality of your work, your architectural judgment, and your influence on peers. You'll work hands-on across the full stack, from pipeline design and orchestration to infrastructure-as-code and observability, while mentoring teammates and driving engineering best practices.

Your Success Profile

What You Will Work On

• Evolve and maintain Justworks' trusted data platform, driving operational excellence and innovation across the organization
• Build scalable data pipelines and related tools that ensure high efficiency, trustworthiness, and innovation in our data stack
• Design and implement ETL/ELT processes using modern cloud solutions (Snowflake, AWS)
• Maintain and improve data and cloud infrastructure as code (Terraform & AWS Serverless Application Model)
• Collaborate cross-functionally with business and engineering teams to understand data requirements and drive solutions
• Ensure the security and privacy of highly sensitive data
• Drive continuous improvements in data cost optimization, observability, and governance

How You Will Do Your Work

As a Sr. Data Platform Engineer, how results are achieved is paramount for your success and ultimately results in our success as an organization. In this role, your foundational knowledge, skills, abilities, and personal attributes are anchored in the following competencies:

• Plans & Aligns - Ensures individual actions support company mission; communicates effectively; understands urgency and plans accordingly
• Balances Stakeholders - Understands internal and external stakeholder requirements, expectations, and needs and acts fairly despite conflicting demands of stakeholders.
• Influence and Leadership - fostering a community of knowledge-sharing, collaboration, mentorship, and forward-thinking across the organization.
• Manages Complexity - Making sense of complex, high quantity, and sometimes contradictory information to effectively solve problems.
• Good Judgment - Pauses before acting; asks questions to fully understand context; applies critical thinking and takes ownership of outcomes
• Teamwork & Communication - Honors diverse thoughts and opinions; leverages unique skills to maximize efficiency
• Skills and Knowledge - the capacity to actively learn and apply specific domain knowledge, know-how, and best practices to continually enhance and improve.

In addition, all Justworkers focus on aligning their behaviors to our core values known as COGIS. It stands for:

• Camaraderie - Day to day you can be seen working together toward a higher purpose. You like to have fun. You’re an active listener, treat people respectfully, and have a strong desire to know and help others.
• Openness - Your default is to be open. You're willing to share information, understand other perspectives, and consider new possibilities. You’re curious, ask open questions, and are receptive to thoughts and feedback from others.
• Grit - You demonstrate grit by having the courage to commit and persevere. You’re committed, earnest, and dive in to get the job done well with a positive attitude.
• Integrity - Simply put, do what you say and say what you'll do. You’re honest and forthright, have a strong moral compass, and strive to match your words with your actions while leading by example.
• Simplicity - Be like Einstein: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional hands-on experience in data engineering; at least 2 years working with modern cloud data technologies
• Strong experience with Snowflake - schema design, query optimization, cost governance, and data sharing capabilities
• Highly proficient in SQL and Python, with a solid understanding of computer science fundamentals and distributed systems
• Experience building and maintaining data pipelines using Airflow, dbt, or equivalent orchestration tools
• Expertise with AWS services (S3, Lambda, Fargate, Redshift, Kinesis, etc.), especially in serverless architectures and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CloudFormation)
• Familiarity with data warehousing and lakehouse patterns, data governance, and cost optimization strategies
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and version control systems (GitHub Actions, CircleCI)
• Experience using AI tools in your engineering workflow - for code generation, testing, or pipeline development

Nice to have

• Experience developing data pipelines that support ML/AI/LLM use cases (e.g., feature stores, model inputs/outputs, vector stores)
• A strong opinion on preferred data serialization formats and the pragmatism to use the right tool for the job
• Experience with streaming/CDC technologies (Estuary, Kafka, Debezium)

Technologies Used

• Languages: Python, SQL, Terraform
• Data & Analytics: Snowflake, dbt, Fivetran
• Streaming & CDC: Estuary
• Workflow Orchestration: Airflow, MWAA
• Cloud: AWS (S3, Lambda, Fargate, Redshift, Kinesis, Step Functions, EventBridge)
• Observability & Monitoring: Datadog
• CI/CD: CircleCI, GitHub Actions

The base wage range for this position based in our New York City Office is targeted at $188,000.00 - $242,000.00 per year.

Actual compensation is based on multiple factors that are unique to each candidate, including and not limited to skill set, level of relevant experience, and specific work location. Salary ranges for positions based in other locations may differ based on the cost of labor in that location.

For more information about Justworks’ Total Reward Philosophy, including all of the perks and benefits we are proud to offer our team members, please visit Total Rewards @ Justworks.

Diversity At Justworks

Justworks is committed to maintaining a workplace where diversity of identity, culture, and life experience is the norm and is celebrated authentically and respected consistently. Diversity in our work, our people, and our product drives creativity and innovation, entrepreneurial leadership and integrity, competitiveness, and collaboration throughout our business and in the market. We depend on our differences to make our team stronger, our workplace more dynamic, and our product accessible to all of our customers.

We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer open to all qualified applicants regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital or familial status, disability, pregnancy, gender identity or expression, veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status. Justworks is fully dedicated to providing necessary support to candidates with disabilities who may require reasonable accommodations. We also provide reasonable accommodations to employees based on their sincerely held religious beliefs, as well as for other covered reasons consistent with applicable federal, state, and local laws. If you're in need of a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at accommodations@justworks.com. Your comfort and success matter to us, and we're here to ensure an inclusive experience.

Our DEIB Report