Staff Data Engineer

Flexera saves customers billions of dollars in wasted technology spend. A pioneer in Hybrid ITAM and FinOps, Flexera provides award-winning, data-oriented SaaS solutions for technology value optimization (TVO), enabling IT, finance, procurement and cloud teams to gain deep insights into cost optimization, compliance and risks for each business service. Flexera One solutions are built on a set of definitive customer, supplier and industry data, powered by our Technology Intelligence Platform, that enables organizations to visualize their Enterprise Technology Blueprint™ in hybrid environments—from on-premises to SaaS to containers to cloud.

We’re transforming the software industry.  We’re Flexera.  Withmore than 50,000 customersacross the world, we’re achievingthat goal.Butwe knowwe can’t do any of that without our team. Ready to help us re-imagine the industry during a time of substantial growth and ambitious plans?  Come and see whywe’re consistently recognized by Gartner, Forrester and IDCas a category leader in the marketplace. Learn more atflexera.com

About the Role:

At Flexera, we empower global enterprises by turning IT insights into action. We're seeking a Staff Data Engineer with deep expertise in architecting and optimizing big data platforms, with a strong focus on Databricks. You'll drive the core design and performance of our lakehouse, enabling analytics, AI/ML, and product innovation at scale.

As a senior technical leader, you'll own key components of our data platform — collaborating with architects, data scientists, and engineers to deliver high-performance, scalable solutions. The ideal candidate is a Databricks expert, fluent in modern data engineering, distributed systems, and cloud-native architectures.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture, design, and evolution of highly scalable, cloud‑native backend systems and APIs.
• Design, build, and own Python-based API services (e.g., FastAPI) that expose data platform capabilities to consumers.
• Design and optimize relational database schemas (PostgreSQL), including indexing, query tuning, and schema migration management.
• Drive technical strategy for reliability, scalability, performance, and cost efficiency across data‑intensive workloads.
• Own complex backend initiatives end‑to‑end, from design through production rollout and operational maturity.
• Own and maintain CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Terraform) — deploying your own work to production, not handing off to a separate team.
• Debug across system boundaries — trace issues from API layer through database to data pipeline and back.
• Collaborate closely with data engineering, frontend, platform, and SRE teams to ensure cohesive system design and execution.
• Influence engineering standards and best practices around code quality, testing, CI/CD, observability, and operational excellence.
• Review and guide designs and implementations across teams, acting as a trusted technical advisor.
• Mentor senior and junior engineers, helping grow technical depth and leadership within the organization.
• Stay ahead of industry trends in backend systems, cloud platforms, and data engineering, applying them thoughtfully at scale.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• 8+ years of backend engineering experience, with a proven track record of building and scaling complex production systems.
• Hands-on Python application/service development — building production APIs and services, not limited to PySpark notebooks or data science scripts.
• Strong RDBMS experience (PostgreSQL preferred) — schema design, complex query authoring and optimization, migration tooling (Flyway), and query-plan-level performance debugging.
• API development ownership — designing, building, deploying, and operating RESTful APIs (FastAPI, Flask, or equivalent).
• CI/CD pipeline ownership — building and maintaining deployment automation (GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, or similar), not relying on a separate platform team.
• Infrastructure-as-Code — Terraform, or similar. Comfortable provisioning cloud resources yourself.
• Experience building large‑scale data or analytics platforms.
• Strong background in observability, monitoring, and incident‑driven learning — distributed tracing, query profiling, and latency diagnosis (not just dashboard monitoring).
• Experience with security, compliance, and enterprise‑grade SaaS requirements.
• Prior experience in FinOps, cloud cost optimization, or enterprise SaaS platforms.
• Experience with AWS (ECS/Fargate, RDS, S3, IAM, Secrets Manager).
• Experience building AI‑powered backend systems, including LLM‑based or agent‑driven workflows.

Preferred but not required:

• Experience with Power BI Direct Lake mode and semantic modeling for lakehouse-based analytics.
• Familiarity with Mosaic AI, Databricks GenAI capabilities, or Feature Store implementations.
• Contributions to open-source Spark, Databricks community content, or certifications (e.g., Databricks Certified Data Engineer Professional).

Why Join Flexera

• Lead and shape mission‑critical backend platforms used by global enterprises.
• Work on complex, high‑impact problems at the intersection of cloud, data, and cost optimization.
• A collaborative, inclusive, and technically driven culture that values strong engineering judgment.
• Competitive compensation, flexible work arrangements, and clear growth paths for senior technical leaders.