Senior Data Engineer

Paradox Machines is a data and AI company building modern data platforms and systems that make business data usable by people, applications, and agents. The Senior Data Engineer will architect and implement scalable data infrastructure, models, streaming pipelines, reporting and AI layers, while leading client-facing projects and advising stakeholders on technical tradeoffs.

Responsibilities:

• You'll architect and implement data platforms end-to-end
• You design models for business, analytics and AI consumption
• You've implemented streaming pipelines in production, and are familiar with popular technologies such as Kafka, Flink, Redpanda, or similar
• You'll work directly with client teams - scoping requirements, presenting architecture decisions, and walking stakeholders through tradeoffs

Requirements:

• Clear communication. This role is client facing - you'll present to business stakeholders, explain tradeoffs in plain language, and build trust through delivery. This is the most important part of the job
• Significant experience building production data systems, with senior-level ownership of architecture decisions
• Deep understanding of modern data architecture and platforms - you've implemented Snowflake, BigQuery, or Databricks, not just used them
• Hands-on knowledge of building scalable and secure data pipelines: orchestration, transformation frameworks (dbt or similar), cloud infrastructure (AWS or GCP)
• Strong opinions on data modeling best practices - Kimball, star schema, Data Vault - and the judgment to pick the right one for the problem
• An understanding of how AI changes data platform design: semantic layers, metadata, and governance built so LLMs and agents can consume data reliably
• genuine interest is required
• Experience implementing streaming pipelines with Kafka, Flink, Redpanda, or similar
• A business orientation and focus on results: you understand that the pipeline exists to answer a business question, and you make tradeoffs accordingly
• A bias for doing: you'll write the query, sketch the schema, or spin up the prototype if that's what moves things forward
• Direct experience here is a plus