Staff Data Engineer

About onX

onX is a technology company built for outdoor enthusiasts. Our team consists of builders, adventurers, and risk takers who develop products that help people explore the outdoors with confidence. We exist to awaken the adventurer inside everyone by optimizing every outdoor experience.

We operate as a high-growth organization where speed, resilience, and adaptation are essential. The environment is fast-paced, and ambiguity is inherent to the work. As conditions evolve, we continuously refine our methods, priorities, and delivery approaches.

Our business advances rapidly, creating meaningful opportunities to influence upcoming work. Different verticals within our company are at distinct maturity levels. These include Hunt, Offroad, Backcountry, and Fish. The challenges and impact of any role depend on the specific area and current business priorities.

We embrace an experimentation-focused mindset, constantly improving our problem-solving approaches. We expect our people to use modern tools, including AI, responsibly and thoughtfully. Human judgment combined with technology is essential to improving quality, speed, and overall impact.

Our influence is visible through the products we create, the stories shared by our customers, and our expanding dedication to land stewardship and recreational access.

About This Role

The Staff Data Engineer is a senior leadership position responsible for designing and evolving core components of onX's lakehouse and data platform. This role concentrates on how data is structured, governed, secured, and described so that analytics, product features, and AI systems function reliably at scale.

This engineer works at the junction of data architecture, metadata, governance, and security. They lead complex initiatives and set technical direction within the Data Engineering organization. They act as a trusted technical partner for Product, Analytics, Data Science, Security, and Platform teams. This role serves as a force multiplier for other engineers through high-level technical guidance and active mentorship.

Day-to-Day Responsibilities

Technical Leadership and Architecture

You will design and evolve the Iceberg-based lakehouse architecture to balance scalability, cost, performance, and maintainability. You will define and promote standards for table design, partitioning, schema evolution, optimization, and data layout.

You will lead architectural efforts involving batch, streaming, and event-driven data processing where they deliver business value. You will drive the design and delivery of complex, cross-team initiatives, enabling teams to operate independently within established architectural guidance.

You will evaluate build versus buy decisions and integrate technologies thoughtfully.

Metadata, Governance, and Open Standards

You will define how datasets, pipelines, features, and models are described, related, and governed using shared metadata. You will lead the adoption and integration of open-source metadata and catalog tools, such as OpenMetadata or similar ecosystems.

You will establish metadata standards that enable self-service analytics, governance, and AI readiness. You will partner with BI and Analytics teams to ensure domain models are clearly documented and aligned with business language.

You will collaborate with Data Science to ensure model inputs, features, and outputs remain traceable, explainable, and reusable.

Security, Access Control, and Compliance

You will design and evolve security and access-control models for Apache Iceberg, including table-level, column-level, and row-level controls. You will partner with Security and Platform teams to embed policy enforcement directly into data access paths.

You will drive metadata-driven authorization patterns that scale across tools and user groups. You will ensure privacy, compliance, and regulatory requirements are incorporated into platform design.

You will balance strong security guarantees with usability to support safe self-service.

Compensation and Location

Compensation for this role ranges from $135,000.00 to $175,000.00 annually. This position is based in Bozeman, Montana, United States.

Requirements

You design table layouts, partitioning, and schema evolution for large, evolving datasets. You define metadata descriptions that allow different teams to understand and use data safely.

You lead cross-team initiatives that deliver complex data capabilities at scale. You evaluate tools and workflows to balance usability with strong security guarantees.

You ensure compliance considerations are embedded in platform design early in the process.

Nice to Have

Experience with Apache Iceberg, OpenMetadata ecosystems, and modern data platforms is valuable.

Skills and Tools

Proficiency with Apache Iceberg, OpenMetadata, SQL, and Python is required.

Practical Notes

Please What you'll do