Principal Engineer - Data Infrastructure

About the role

Sezzle is looking for a Principal Engineer to own and advance its data infrastructure as the company scales. You will manage database systems and warehousing platforms, drive performance improvements, and guide the adoption of new technologies. This position sits within a growing data organization where your work directly supports engineering, analytics, and business teams across the company.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Take full ownership of database and data warehousing systems, including MySQL, Postgres, change data capture, and Redshift, along with their KPIs and SLAs
• Lead efforts to improve database and query performance across production systems
• Create and maintain internal tooling for managing, migrating, and optimizing data infrastructure
• Collaborate with product engineering to deliver well-tested queries and schema designs that meet business needs
• Guide the evolution of data systems to handle higher volumes of writes, events, and complex ETL workloads
• Assess and introduce new technologies that strengthen the data platform
• Support data engineers and analysts with Redshift and warehouse tuning, including query optimization, modeling, and cost control
• Use Claude or similar large language model tools to improve productivity, research, and communication

Requirements

• 12+ years of experience in DBA, SRE, or Data Engineering roles with a history of scaling production systems
• Deep knowledge of MySQL, Postgres, AWS Redshift or comparable platforms, including performance tuning, table design, and workload management
• Advanced SQL skills
• Hands-on experience with data replication and ETL/ELT frameworks, particularly DBT, AWS DMS, or equivalent tools
• Strong grasp of data modeling, distributed systems, and warehouse or lake design patterns
• Ability to work in a fast-moving, collaborative setting with strong communication and documentation abilities
• Demonstrated experience using Claude or equivalent LLM tools

Nice to have

• Background in high-growth, data-intensive fintech or regulated industries
• Familiarity with lakehouse architectures and modern stacks such as Snowflake, Databricks, Iceberg, or Delta Lake
• Experience designing scalable, fault-tolerant data pipelines using orchestration tools like Airflow, Dagster, or Prefect, processing 100GB to 1TB of new data daily
• Knowledge of streaming technologies including Kafka, Kinesis, Flink, or Spark Streaming
• Strong interest in applying AI tools to maximize productivity

Skills & tools

• Languages: Golang, Typescript, Python
• Frontend: Typescript with React and React Native
• Backend: Golang
• Databases: MySQL, Postgres, Elasticsearch, AWS Redshift
• Data tools: DBT, AWS DMS, Aurora RDS
• DevOps and Cloud: AWS, Kubernetes
• Version Control: Git
• CI/CD: Gitlab
• Testing: Developer and AI-driven approach with automated end-to-end, integration, and unit tests
• Philosophy: Open source preferred, build before buy

Practical notes

• Monthly salary range is $6,000 to $12,500 USD gross, based on location and experience
• Company prioritizes open source solutions and internal tooling development