Lead Data Engineer (Partner Company Role)
WFA Digital Insight
The demand for skilled data engineers has skyrocketed, with a 25% increase in job postings over the past year. FYST is at the forefront of fintech innovation, and this Lead Data Engineer role presents a unique chance to shape the company's data infrastructure from the ground up. With a strong focus on remote work and digital skills, this position requires a candidate who can balance technical expertise with leadership acumen. As the fintech industry continues to grow, with over 30% of companies investing in data-driven technologies, this role offers a chance to be part of a rapidly evolving field. Before applying, candidates should be aware of the need for a strong data engineering background, experience with Snowflake and PostgreSQL CDC, and the ability to drive technical decisions.
Job Description
About the Role
As a Lead Data Engineer at FYST, you will be responsible for designing and implementing the company's data architecture, leveraging technologies such as Postgres CDC, Kafka, and Snowflake. This is a hands-on leadership role that requires a deep understanding of data engineering principles, as well as the ability to drive technical decisions and grow a team around you. You will be working closely with cross-functional teams to ensure seamless data integration and delivery.The role entails building and maintaining large-scale data pipelines, ensuring data quality and integrity, and driving the development of a data-driven culture within the organization. You will be responsible for shaping the data engineering function, defining the technical roadmap, and hiring and growing a team of skilled data engineers.
FYST is a young and ambitious company, and this role presents a unique opportunity to make a significant impact on the company's growth and development. You will be working in a dynamic and collaborative environment, with a team of passionate and skilled professionals who are dedicated to delivering innovative solutions.
What You Will Do
- Design and implement the target-state data architecture, leveraging Postgres CDC, Kafka, and Snowflake
- Own tooling decisions across ingestion, orchestration, transformation, and quality layers
- Implement CDC-based ingestion from PostgreSQL services using Debezium or equivalent
- Build streaming and near-real-time pipelines with defined SLAs
- Develop a data quality control layer, including checksums, reconciliation, schema validation, and anomaly detection
- Define quality checkpoints across the full pipeline, from source capture through Snowflake to client delivery
- Define and enforce data contracts with service-owning teams for core entities
- Build the external data delivery layer, including financial settlement, transaction status, and client analytics
- Design tenant separation and implement replay/reload mechanisms for failure recovery
- Start hands-on and gradually hire and grow a small data engineering team as the function matures
- Build a pragmatic roadmap with concrete deliverables at 3, 6, and 12 months
What We Are Looking For
- 5+ years of experience in data engineering, with end-to-end ownership of production pipelines
- Hands-on experience with Snowflake, PostgreSQL CDC, and Kafka
- Solid AWS experience, including S3, RDS, Aurora, and cloud data infrastructure
- Data quality engineering mindset, with experience in monitoring, reconciliation, and lineage
- Comfortable defining data contracts and driving requirements with backend engineering teams
- Technical leadership experience, including project ownership, cross-team alignment, and delivery under constraints
- Strong understanding of data engineering principles, including data modeling, data warehousing, and ETL
- Experience with Kubernetes, Airflow/Prefect/Dagster, and dbt
- Payments domain knowledge, including settlement, transaction lifecycle, and processor integrations
- Familiarity with gRPC, RabbitMQ, and reading Go/Python service code
- English language skills at the B2 level and fluent Russian language
Nice to Have
- Experience with cloud-based data platforms, such as AWS Redshift or Google BigQuery
- Knowledge of data governance and data security best practices
- Experience with agile development methodologies and version control systems, such as Git
- Familiarity with containerization technologies, such as Docker
Benefits and Perks
- Opportunity to work with a young and ambitious company, with a strong focus on innovation and growth
- Competitive compensation package, with yearly performance reviews
- Remote work arrangement, with 20 days of vacation time, bank holidays, sick leaves, and an additional birthday day off
- Chance to work with a talented team of professionals, who are passionate about delivering high-quality solutions
- Professional development opportunities, including training and conference attendance
- Access to cutting-edge technologies and tools, including Snowflake, Kafka, and PostgreSQL CDC
How to Stand Out
- Make sure to highlight your experience with Snowflake, PostgreSQL CDC, and Kafka, as these are key technologies for this role.
- Be prepared to discuss your approach to data quality engineering, including monitoring, reconciliation, and lineage.
- Showcase your technical leadership experience, including project ownership, cross-team alignment, and delivery under constraints.
- Familiarize yourself with the payments domain, including settlement, transaction lifecycle, and processor integrations.
- Be ready to discuss your experience with cloud-based data platforms, such as AWS Redshift or Google BigQuery, and your understanding of data governance and data security best practices.
- Consider creating a portfolio of your work, including examples of your data engineering projects and accomplishments.
- Prepare to negotiate your salary, based on your experience and qualifications, and be sure to ask about the company's approach to professional development and growth opportunities.
This is a remote position listed on WFA Digital, the platform for professionals who work from anywhere. Browse more remote jobs across all categories.