Key skills
Data engineeringDistributed data systemsKafkaCloud experienceAnalytics technologiesData governanceCommunication skillsLeadershipMLData EngineeringAnalyticsSnowflakeAWSAzureGCPCommunication
About this role
Vercel is a company that provides developers with tools and cloud infrastructure for building a faster, more personalized web. They are seeking a Principal Engineer to lead the architecture and development of their next-generation Data Platform, focusing on scalable data systems and real-time analytics.
Responsibilities:
- Architect and build a scalable data platform for batch and real-time workloads
- Design streaming and event-driven systems using Kafka and related tooling
- Implement modern lakehouse foundations, including Iceberg-based storage and governance
- Partner with engineering, product, and leadership to define data strategy and technical direction
- Establish best practices for ingestion, modeling, storage, quality, and security
- Write production-grade code and set engineering standards across the team
- Improve reliability through strong observability, monitoring, and fault tolerance
- Drive long-term architectural decisions and evaluate build-vs-buy tradeoffs
- Support analytics and ML teams by delivering high-quality data systems and tooling
Requirements:
- 8+ years in data engineering or data architecture, including senior/principal-level work
- Deep experience designing and operating large-scale distributed data systems
- Strong expertise with Kafka and analytics/lakehouse technologies (ClickHouse, Tinybird, Snowflake, Iceberg)
- Strong cloud experience (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
- Experience with data governance, reliability, and secure data operations
- Excellent communication skills and ability to influence across engineering and product teams
- Demonstrated leadership through mentorship, design ownership, or technical direction