Senior Data Engineer
Job Description
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.
If this sounds like you, you’ll fit right in.
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 contribute to the technical vision and long-term data strategy of the Data and Analytics Engineering team.
Your Success Profile
What You Will Work On
- Evolve and maintain Justworks' trusted data analytics 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, Redshift on AWS).
- Maintain and improve data and cloud infrastructure as code (Terraform & AWS Serverless Application Model).
- Transform raw data into business-ready datasets that are queryable, governed, and easily understood by various business units (e.g., Sales, Marketing, Product, Engineering, People Ops).
- 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.
- (Bonus) Build data pipelines that support ML/AI/LLM use cases, enabling AI-powered insights and analytics.
How You Will Do Your Work
- Good Judgment: Apply critical thinking and risk assessment to develop sustainable and scalable solutions.
- Resourcefulness: Overcome obstacles creatively and efficiently, optimizing available tools and technologies.
- Teamwork & Communication: Foster strong collaboration through clear documentation and cross-team engagement.
- Influence & Leadership: Mentor peers, share knowledge, and drive best practices in data engineering.
- Continuous Learning: Stay current with modern data technologies, AI/ML trends, and emerging best practices.
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).
- Nice to Have: Experience developing data pipelines that support ML/AI/LLM use cases (e.g., feature stores, model inputs/outputs, vector stores).
- Nice to Have: A strong opinion on preferred data serialization formats (e.g., Parquet, Avro, ORC)—and the pragmatism to use the right tool for the job.
Technologies Used
- AWS: S3, Lambda, Fargate, Redshift, MSK, Step Functions, EventBridge, etc.
- Languages: Python, SQL, Terraform, CloudFormation
- Data & Analytics: Snowflake, dbt, Fivetran, Tableau, Meltano
- Workflow Orchestration: Airflow, MWAA
- Observability & Monitoring: Datadog, Metaplane
- CI/CD: CircleCI, GitHub Actions
- AI/ML: scikit-learn, xgboost, mlflow, Langsmith, OpenAI, Bedrock, Langchain
The base wage range for this position based in our New York City Office is targeted at $192,500.00 to $211,750.00 per year.
#LI-AJ #LI-Hybrid
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 [email protected]. Your comfort and success matter to us, and we're here to ensure an inclusive experience.
Company Information
Location: New York, NY
Type: Hybrid