{"id":123892,"url":"https://alion.io/job/shield-ai-staff-engineer-data-platform-r5659","title":"Staff Engineer, Data Platform (R5659)","company":{"id":50,"name":"Shield AI","domain":"shield.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/shield-ai","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Lever","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":62,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.806,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":76,"computed_at":"2026-10-20T05:45:00Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"staff","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Diego, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":150000,"max":230000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":230000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Agentic Workflows","optional":false},{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Amazon S3","optional":false},{"name":"Apache Kafka","optional":false},{"name":"GitOps","optional":false},{"name":"Go","optional":false},{"name":"Helm","optional":false},{"name":"Knowledge Graph","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"Linux","optional":false},{"name":"Multimodal AI","optional":false},{"name":"NATS","optional":false},{"name":"Platform Engineering","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false},{"name":"Ray","optional":false},{"name":"Redpanda","optional":false},{"name":"Terraform","optional":false},{"name":"Time Series Forecasting","optional":false},{"name":"WebSockets","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-26T00:21:58Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-08-26","last_verified_at":"2026-10-20T06:09:22Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":55,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":55},"description":"Job Description:\nWe are looking for a Staff Data Platform Engineer to help define and build the data foundation of the AI Factory.\nThe Data Platform provides a unifying, knowledge-graph-centered API layer for human and agentic workflows. It connects configurations, requirements, software versions, test executions, files, signals, training data, and results through stable identities and typed relationships. It also provides consistent access to the storage and compute systems behind those data products.\nThis is a hands-on technical leadership role. You will design platform architecture, implement production software, evaluate storage and compute technologies, establish data-modeling patterns, and work directly with teams collecting and consuming mission-critical data. Success requires balancing developer productivity, semantic clarity, operational reliability, system performance, portability, and long-term maintainability.\nWhat you'll do:\nDevelop a unifying Graph API: Lead the architecture and implementation of the knowledge graph and multi-modal API layer that serves as the backbone for human, service, and agentic workflows. \nOwn DataOps infrastructure: Research, optimize, and maintain the storage, indexing, query, ingestion, and compute infrastructure used throughout the data lifecycle. \nEstablish best-practices: Establish durable, best-practice patterns for schema modeling, relationships, lineage, and schema evolution. \nTurbocharge agentic data access: Build APIs that enable agents to retrieve structured, connected, and explainable context rather than relying only on keyword or vector similarity. \nDevelop reference architectures: Establish recommended storage and compute profiles, deployment patterns, benchmarks, and operational guidance for both internal and customer-managed infrastructure. \nAdvise downstream teams: Partner directly with autonomy, ML, test, infrastructure, product, and customer-facing teams to turn real workflows into reusable platform capabilities from modeling to integrations. \nBuild first-party integrations: Deliver integrations that make important data easy to collect and aggregate, including data produced by simulations, test infrastructure, training systems, and edge devices. \nImprove developer experience: Create self-service APIs, SDKs, tools, examples, and diagnostics that make correct data modeling and ingestion the easiest path. \nDrive technical direction: Evaluate emerging data and AI infrastructure technologies, make principled build-versus-buy decisions, and guide implementation across team boundaries. \n Raise operational quality: Establish expectations for observability, performance, reliability, security, data integrity, disaster recovery, and lifecycle management. \nKey outcomes:\nHuman and agentic workflows use one coherent API for discovering data, traversing relationships, and accessing specialized payloads. \nTeams spend their time deciding how to model and use data rather than repeatedly deciding where and how to store it. \nData produced at the edge, in simulation, during testing, and in training flows into reusable platform models with minimal integration friction. \nPortable and operational platform capabilities across all deployment environments. \nDownstream teams can adopt the platform through stable APIs and SDKs instead of custom point-to-point integrations. \nRequired qualifications:\nSignificant experience designing and operating distributed data solutions, storage systems, or data-intensive backend services. \nStrong software engineering skills and a record of delivering production systems in languages such as Go and Python. \nDeep understanding of data modeling, API design, schema evolution, identity, consistency, indexing, query planning, and data lifecycle concerns. \nExperience working across multiple storage modalities, such as relational or graph databases, object storage, analytical or columnar systems, and file storage. \nExperience designing reliable ingestion and access paths for high-volume or operationally important data. \nStrong understanding of Kubernetes, Linux, networking, security, storage, observability, and distributed-systems fundamentals. \nExperience deploying data infrastructure across cloud or customer-managed environments using modern Infrastructure as Code and platform engineering practices. \nAbility to evaluate technologies through prototypes, benchmarks, operational requirements, and total lifecycle cost rather than feature lists alone. \nExperience defining architecture and technical standards while remaining hands-on in implementation and debugging. \nDemonstrated ability to collaborate with ML researchers, autonomy engineers, test teams, platform engineers, and product stakeholders. \nClear technical communication and the ability to make complex data architecture understandable to both specialists and downstream users. \nBonus qualifications and relevant technologies:\nExperience in any of the following is beneficial but not required:\nExperience with specialized modern databases (eg graph, OLAP, etc...) \nGraph-backed retrieval, agent tooling, structured RAG, provenance-aware context construction, or explainable retrieval systems. \nS3-compatible APIs, cloud object storage, content-addressable storage, multipart transfer, or large-file lifecycle management. \nApache Arrow, Parquet, columnar formats, time-series data, or high-performance analytical query systems. \nOpenAPI, AsyncAPI, WebSockets, generated SDKs, and long-lived public API contracts. \nKubernetes storage and data operators, Terraform, Helm, GitOps, and repeatable platform distribution. \nDistributed execution technologies such as Ray and experience connecting workflow execution to data lineage and artifact management. \nStreaming and ingestion technologies such as Kafka, NATS, Redpanda, or comparable event-driven systems. \nData and analysis in a robotics or AI domain. \nML data lifecycle systems, experiment tracking, dataset management, evaluation infrastructure, feature or artifact stores, and model versioning. \nObservability tools, distributed tracing, and benchmarking. \nData security, authorization, governance, retention, classification, and auditability across shared platforms. \nWhy join us:\nThe Data Platform is foundational to how Shield AI builds, evaluates, certifies, and improves autonomy. This role offers the opportunity to shape both a core internal platform and a reference architecture delivered into demanding customer environments.\nYour work will determine how effectively engineers and agents can find trusted context, understand provenance, aggregate data from distributed systems, and turn operational experience into better intelligent systems. You will work at the intersection of data systems, AI infrastructure, autonomy, distributed computing, and defense while helping establish the architecture that supports the next generation of mission-critical AI development.","description_format":"text","description_chars":6927,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Military Drones","Defense Manufacturing","Defense AI","Drone AI"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-08-26T00:21:58Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 2","filings_12m":2,"filings_prev_12m":2,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":132500,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-15T11:24:14+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":1}],"liveness":{"score":36,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.595,"p_room":0.6,"age_days":55,"expected_fill_days":76,"reasons":["conf:3","stale_co","velocity","win:late","crowd:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-20T05:45:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":230000,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/shield-ai-staff-engineer-data-platform-r5659","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/shield-ai-staff-engineer-data-platform-r5659.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-20T10:10:40Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":11116,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-21T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":50},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=50"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fshield-ai-staff-engineer-data-platform-r5659"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fshield-ai-staff-engineer-data-platform-r5659"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fshield-ai-staff-engineer-data-platform-r5659"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/shield-ai-staff-engineer-data-platform-r5659\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fshield-ai-staff-engineer-data-platform-r5659"}]}