Lead Data Engineer San Mateo, CA

Remember the days when you were navigating your academic path — the feeling of being lost, unsure of which courses to take, or uncertain about your graduation timeline? At Stellic, we get it because our journey started just like yours. Born out of the challenges faced by international students at Carnegie Mellon, we’ve grown into a movement that’s reshaping the future of education by addressing one of higher education’s biggest challenges: the $200B dropout crisis.Today, we’ve partnered with 75 universities across 7 countries — including top institutions like Cornell, Columbia University, and Ohio State University — to empower students to take control of their academic journey with clarity, confidence, and purpose. Our platform gives students the tools they need to plan ahead, stay on track, and succeed, from day one through graduation.At Stellic, we believe in the power of personalized education, and our culture thrives on collaboration, innovation, and the passion to solve meaningful problems. Your ideas will have a real-world impact, as you work alongside some of the brightest minds in the industry to reimagine what education can be. Join us; together, we’ll help millions of students worldwide own their educational future.What Sets Stellic Engineers Apart

Stellic engineers combine a rare blend of curiosity, creativity, and business acumen with the ability to deliver pragmatic solutions at high velocity with uncompromising quality. Our mission is to help students, and our engineers always have that in mind as they are building.Why This role

Stellic is at a significant crossroads. Having proved incredibly strong product-market fit, and having maintained enviable customer NPS ratings, it’s time to prepare for the next stages of our evolution. The naive implementations of our data pipelines have reached their expiration date, yet we continue to have ambitious roadmaps that will allow us to continue to improve the lives of students all over the world. We need someone who can lead us into the future by driving upgrades to our data pipelines while at the same time up-leveling our current engineering team’s ability to delight our users with new product capabilities.What you'll do:

Work closely with the founders and product managers to understand the Why behind each capability in the platformHelp to drive alignment on the prioritization of engineering-driven priorities alongside product prioritiesDesign and lead the implementation of scalable backend architectures for mission-critical enterprise applicationsBuild and maintain clean data orchestration pipelinesDevelop and optimize database schemas and queries to process terabytes of data efficientlyUp-level our general engineering rigor and maturity by mentoring other engineers in best practices, design patterns, and code qualityEnsure a high-degree of quality by designing robust testing strategies and implementing suites of reliable testsWhat you'll need:

5+ years of experience as a backend / data engineer operating at scale (minimum 3+ years of experience in data engineering specifically)Strong ownership mindset and the ability to autonomously lead and drive complex implementationsDeep curiosity, customer empathy, and commitment to engineering as a craftAbility to plan, estimate, and manage the technical aspects of project execution and deliveryExcellent problem-solving skills and ability to mentor junior developersImpeccable communication skills for collaborating with product, design, and customer-facing teamsWhat we need from you:

Proven track record building and managing data orchestration pipelines for ETL and other large-scale data processing problems using high-level languages like Python and frameworks like Dagster, Airflow, etc.Deep knowledge of and experience with data processing frameworks like DuckDB, Polars, Pandas, Kafka, Spark, etc.Strong understanding of data infrastructure, governance, compliance and how enterprises use dataExperience working with iPaaS solutions like FiveTran, Talend, Airbyte, etc.Deep experience with ORMs, RESTful APIs, background jobs, etc; (DRF, Celery a plus)Experience with both single- and multi-tenant architecturesAdvanced skills in cloud deployment and hyperscalers (AWS a plus)Strong proficiency in designing and optimizing SQL databases and complex SQL queries (PostgreSQL a plus)Experience with asynchronous / event-based programming, message / event queues, etc.Strong background in API design, documentation, and versioning strategiesSolid understanding of software testing, CI/CD practices, observability, etc. (AWS CodeDeploy, Sentry, Grafana, Prometheus a plus)What Tech We Use:

While we plan on introducing new technologies and capabilities, and potentially migrating away from current ones, here is the general shape of our current stack:Languages: Python, SQL, ShellFrameworks: Django, Angular, React, RemixVersion control: Git (GitHub)Cloud: AWSDeployment: AWS CodeDeployWhy Join

Be part of a customer-centric team that is addressing the core issues in higher education via an expandable platform that is overwhelmingly loved by students and valued by administratorsThe opportunity to join at the ground level of a promising and developing organization, and build/lead a team critically responsible for its growthWork and learn from some of the most prominent thought leaders in higher education and SaaSBe part of a culture where ownership, new ideas, and creativity is celebratedGenerous stock options in a Series A stage startupFlexible, outcome-based cultureMedical, dental, vision, and life insurance401K and commuter benefitsAnnual international retreats in some of the most beautiful cities & townsStellic is an Equal Opportunity EmployerOur company values diversity and believes diverse teams make innovation possible. We encourage all qualified applicants from any race, color, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or other characteristics to apply.Apply for this job#J-18808-Ljbffr