Staff Data Engineer

About the role

As a Staff Data Engineer on the People Data team, you'll help build and evolve the centralized platform that powers every Checkr product. This platform stores and serves the identity and people records that underpin Checkr's Workforce, Mortgage, Tenant, Trust, and Personal products, making it foundational to the company's AI-powered verification platform and every high-stakes decision our customers make.

Responsibilities

• Architect, design, lead, and build an end-to-end, performant, reliable, scalable data platform.
• Work as an independent contributor: solve problems and deliver high-quality solutions with minimal oversight and strong ownership.
• Mentor and guide junior engineers to deliver complex, next-generation features.
• Partner with engineering, product, design, and other stakeholders to design and architect new features.
• Experimentation mindset: autonomy and empowerment to validate a customer need, get team buy-in, and ship a rapid MVP.
• Quality mindset: you treat quality as a non-negotiable part of your software deliverables.
• Analytical mindset: instrument and deploy new product experiments with a data-driven approach.
• Monitor, triage, and resolve production issues for the team's services.
• Create and maintain data pipelines and foundational datasets to support product and business needs.

Requirements

• 10+ years designing, implementing, and delivering highly scalable, performant data platforms.
• Experience building large-scale data processing pipelines using ETL/ELT, batch, and stream processing.
• Expert-level proficiency in PySpark, Python, and SQL.
• Expertise in data modeling, relational databases, and NoSQL data stores (e.g., MongoDB).
• Experience with big data technologies such as Kafka, Spark, Iceberg, data lakes, and the AWS stack (EKS, EMR, Serverless, Glue, Athena, S3, etc.).
• Knowledge of security best practices and data privacy concerns.
• Strong problem-solving skills and attention to detail.

Qualifications

• BS/MS in Computer Science, Engineering, Statistics, or related field.
• Experience with cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Experience with distributed systems, microservices, and containerization.
• Experience with data warehousing and analytics tools.

Skills

• Python, SQL, and PySpark.
• Data modeling and database design.
• Big data technologies (Kafka, Spark, Iceberg, data lakes).
• Cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Distributed systems and microservices.
• Containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Data warehousing and analytics tools.

Benefits

• Learning and development allowance.
• Competitive cash and equity compensation, and opportunity for advancement.
• 100% medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• Up to $25K reimbursement for fertility, adoption, and parental planning services.
• Flexible PTO policy.
• Monthly wellness stipend.

Pay

• On-target Earnings OR Base Salary range (San Francisco, CA): $196,000—$230,000 USD
• On-target Earnings OR Base Salary range (Denver, CO): $166,000—$195,000 USD

Schedule

• In-office 3+ days a week.
• Lunch provided 5 times a week.
• Commuter stipend.
• Abundance of snacks and beverages.
• Relocation stipend may be available for those willing to relocate to a Checkr hub location.