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Tech Lead, Data Engineering

United States
  • Own and evolve Zip’s batch, streaming, and lakehouse platforms, powering trusted data for AI, risk, and financial systems.
  • Architect and deliver scalable, secure, and governed data products that unlock speed, accuracy, and insight across the business.
  • Remote-first opportunity for US-based employees with the option to work in-person out of our Manhattan office 

Start your adventure with Zip 

The Tech Lead-Data Engineering is a senior technical owner responsible for the architecture, reliability, and evolution of Zip’s core data platforms powering financial operations, risk, analytics, and AI. This role owns technical strategy across one or more high-impact data domains and delivers outcomes through hands-on execution, architectural leadership, and operational rigor.

You will design and operate mission-critical batch and real-time data systems with strong guarantees around correctness, timeliness, availability, security, and cost, while raising the technical bar across the data engineering organization.

Interesting problems you’ll get to solve

Platform Architecture & Technical Strategy

  • Own the technical direction and long-term architecture of Zip’s data platforms across Data Lake, Lakehouse, and Streaming systems.
  • Make and document architectural decisions across Snowflake, Databricks, Azure, and open table formats (Iceberg, Delta, Delta Live Tables), balancing scalability, governance, correctness, and unit economics.
  • Define reference architectures for ingestion, transformation, storage, and consumption, with clear contracts and ownership boundaries.
  • Establish standards for ETL/ELT, data modeling (Medallion, Data Vault, Kimball), schema evolution, data contracts, and access patterns using Airflow (Astronomer), Python, SQL, and cloud-native tooling.
  • Define and enforce transformation standards using dbt Core / dbt Cloud, including modular modeling, testing, documentation, and CI-integrated deployments.
  • Design and operate high-throughput batch and streaming pipelines using Kafka / Azure Event Hub, including CDC and event-driven architectures.
  • Own ingestion reliability and scalability using Airbyte and custom frameworks, ensuring data completeness and correctness.
  • Ensure platforms meet fintech-grade non-functional requirements, including security, privacy, compliance, resiliency, and cost controls.

Reliability, Quality & Operational Excellence

  • Set the standard for production-grade data systems: deterministic, testable, fault-tolerant, observable, and recoverable.
  • Own engineering quality across design reviews, code standards, testing strategies, and data validation frameworks.
  • Lead investigation and resolution of complex, cross-platform incidents impacting financial reporting, risk, or customer-facing analytics.
  • Define and enforce SLAs/SLOs, incident response playbooks, and postmortem practices.
  • Drive Monitoring-as-Code and deep observability across pipelines, storage, and compute, including freshness, volume, and quality metrics.

Analytics, Risk & AI Enablement

  • Build trusted, well-modeled data foundations supporting financial reporting, risk modeling, BI, AI/ML, vector search, and NLQ use cases.
  • Ensure analytical and AI workloads operate safely and predictably without compromising data integrity or platform stability.
  • Apply data governance by design, including ownership, lineage, access controls, and data quality enforcement to meet regulatory and audit requirements.
  • Design and maintain a centralized semantic layer to ensure consistent metrics, trusted insights, and self-service analytics across BI, experimentation, and AI.
  • Partner with Risk, Legal, and Governance teams to ensure Responsible AI, auditability, and compliance are enforced by design.

Execution, Economics & Technical Judgment

  • Translate ambiguous, high-impact initiatives into clear technical strategies and delivery plans.
  • Drive a data product mindset, defining ownership, SLAs, contracts, and documentation for domain-aligned data products.
  • Anticipate scaling limits, failure modes, and cost inflection points, making explicit trade-offs grounded in strong economic thinking.
  • Proactively reduce technical debt and operational risk, prioritizing work that compounds platform leverage.
  • Delegate ownership while maintaining architectural coherence and high engineering standards.

Technical Leadership

  • Act as a technical multiplier, mentoring senior engineers and accelerating organizational maturity.
  • Lead technical hiring, onboarding, design forums, and knowledge-sharing practices.
  • Influence cross-functional partners across Product, Analytics, Risk, Finance, and Engineering through clear technical communication and data-driven decision-making.

What you’ll bring to the team 

  • 10+ years building and operating large-scale, distributed data platforms, ideally in fintech or regulated environments.
  • Deep, hands-on expertise with:
    • Snowflake, Databricks, Airflow (Astronomer), Python, SQL
    • Azure cloud infrastructure
    • Kafka / Event Hub, batch and streaming architectures
    • Airbyte, CDC, and modern ingestion patterns
    • Open table formats (Iceberg, Delta)
    • Analytics and governance tooling (Atlan, Tableau, Power BI)

  • Proven ability to design systems with strong correctness, availability, and observability guarantees.
  • Strong experience with DevOps, CI/CD, Infrastructure-as-Code, and automation.
  • Demonstrated success leading complex, multi-year data platform initiatives and influencing senior technical and business stakeholders.

What you’ll get in return

Zip is a place where you’ll get out what you put in. The newness of our sector means we need to move at pace and embrace change, and our promise to you when you join the team is that you’ll feel empowered and trusted to make big things happen quickly. 

We want you to feel welcome and as though you have the support to be yourself, and care for yourself at work. Because it’s important to us that you make the most of the opportunities you’ll get to grow your skills and your career, and be surrounded by smart, friendly people and leaders that have your back.

We think these are just some of the best things about being a Zipster. We will also offer you:

  • Flexible working culture
  • Incentive programs
  • Unlimited PTO
  • Generous paid parental leave
  • Leading family support policies
  • Company-sponsored 401k match
  • Learning and wellness subscription stipend
  • Beautiful Union Square office with a casual dress code
  • Industry-leading, employer-sponsored insurance for you and your dependents, with several 100% Zip-covered choices available

Zip is committed to a straightforward and transparent pay structure. The actual base salary will be determined by various individualized factors, including job-related knowledge, skills, experience, location, internal equity, as well as other objective business considerations. The annual base Pay Range for this position is $161,000 - $180,000. This range reflects our US national compensation band (USN). Additional premium percentages may apply based on our tiered premium strategy.

Subject to those same considerations, the total compensation package for this position may also include other elements, including a bonus and/or commission awards, in addition to a full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits. 

If hired, employees will be in an 'at-will position' and the Company reserves the right to modify base salary (as well as any other discretionary payment or compensation or benefit program) at any time, including for reasons related to individual performance, Company or individual department/team performance, and market factors.

Be a part of a team that reflects the diversity of our customers

We pride ourselves on being a workplace that provides equal opportunities to people of all ages, cultural backgrounds, sexual orientations, gender identities, abilities, veteran status, and everything else that makes you unique.

Equally, we’re committed to ensuring our recruitment processes are accessible and inclusive. Please let us know If there are any adjustments that need to be made to ensure you have a fair and equitable experience.

And finally…get to know us

Zip Co Limited (ASX: ZIP) is a digital financial services company, offering innovative, people-centered products.

Operating in two core markets - Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) and the US, Zip offers access to point-of-sale credit and digital payment services, connecting millions of customers with its global network of tens of thousands of merchants.

We’re proud to be a values-led business and our values - Customer First, Own it, Stronger Together and Change the Game - guide us in everything we do.

I acknowledge by clicking "Submit Application", that the information provided is true and correct. I also understand that any willful dishonesty may render for refusal of this application or immediate termination of employment. By providing your information, you acknowledge that you have read our Zip Applicant and Candidate Privacy Notice and authorize Zip to process your data subject to those terms. Zip participates in the federal government’s E-Verify program.

Before you apply, give Zip a try   -> rebrand.ly/check-zip-out

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Please cover:

  • What failed (pipeline, ingestion, modeling, streaming, governance, etc.)

  • How you detected and mitigated the issue

  • What changes you made to prevent recurrence (SLAs, testing, observability, contracts, or architecture)

  • How you balanced speed, correctness, and stakeholder impact during the incident

Please include:

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