{"id":2453786,"url":"https://alion.io/job/simplemachines-principal-data-engineer-2","title":"Principal Data Engineer","company":{"id":720743,"name":"Simplemachines","domain":"simplemachines.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/simplemachines-2","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workable","truth_index":{"grade":"C","score":66,"open_postings":16,"ghost_share":0.563,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-13T05:45:00Z"}},"role":"Data Science","role_family":"Data Science","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"posting_text","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"explicit","locations":[],"countries":[],"hiring_countries":["PL"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":64000,"max_usd":110000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":14},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Amazon Kinesis","optional":false},{"name":"Apache Kafka","optional":false},{"name":"ArgoCD","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"BigQuery","optional":false},{"name":"Cassandra","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Databricks","optional":false},{"name":"dbt","optional":false},{"name":"Flink","optional":false},{"name":"GCP","optional":false},{"name":"GitHub Actions","optional":false},{"name":"Google BigQuery","optional":false},{"name":"Great Expectations","optional":false},{"name":"PostgreSQL","optional":false},{"name":"Pulumi","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Snowflake","optional":false},{"name":"Spark","optional":false},{"name":"SQL","optional":false},{"name":"Terraform","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-13T15:31:44Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-13","last_verified_at":"2026-10-13T19:26:54Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":0,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":0},"description":"Principal Data Engineer\nWho We Are\nSimple Machines is a global, independent technology consultancy operating across Sydney, New Zealand, London, and Poland. We design and build modern data platforms, intelligent systems, and bespoke software at the intersection of Data Engineering, Software Engineering andAI.\nWe work with enterprises, scale-ups, and government to turn messy, high-value data into products, platforms, and decisions that actually move the needle.\nWe don’t do generic. We build things that matter - We engineer data to life™.\nRequirements\nThe Role\nThis is a hands-on principal engineering role, not an architecture-only seat and not a support function. You’ll be responsible for technical direction, platform design and architectural decision-making.\nYou'll design and build greenfield data platforms, real-time pipelines, and data products for clients who are serious about using data properly. You’ll work in small, high-calibre teams and operate close to both the problem and the client.\nIf you enjoy solving hard data problems, shaping modern architectures (data mesh, data products, contracts), and delivering real outcomes - this is your lane.\nWhat You’ll Be Doing\nLead Platform & Architecture Design\nOwn the end-to-end architecture of modern, cloud-native data platforms \n Design scalable data ecosystems using data mesh, data products, and data contracts \n Make high-impact architectural decisions across ingestion, storage, processing, and access layers \n Ensure platforms are secure, compliant, and production-grade by design\nBuild Modern Data Platforms\n Design and deliver cloud-native data platforms using Databricks, Snowflake, AWS, and GCP \n Apply modern architectural patterns: data mesh, data products, and data contracts \n Integrate deeply with client systems to enable scalable, consumer-oriented data access \nDevelop High-Performance Pipelines\n Build and optimise batch and real-time pipelines \n Work with streaming and event-driven tech such as Kafka, Flink, Kinesis, Pub/Sub \n Orchestrate workflows using Airflow, Dataflow, Glue \nWork at Scale\n Process and transform large datasets using Spark and Flink \n Design systems that perform in production - not just on paper \nOwn Data Storage & Performance\n Work across relational, NoSQL, and analytical stores (Postgres, BigQuery, Snowflake, Cassandra, MongoDB) \n Optimise storage formats and access patterns (Parquet, Delta, ORC, Avro) \nCloud, Security & Governance\n Implement secure, compliant data solutions with security by design \n Embed governance without killing developer velocity \nConsult and Influence\n Work directly with clients to understand problems and shape solutions \n Translate business needs into pragmatic engineering decisions \n Act as a trusted technical advisor, not just an order taker\nTechnical Leadership & Quality\nSet engineering standards, patterns, and best practices across teams \nReview designs and code, providing clear technical direction and mentorship \nRaise the bar on data quality, testing, observability, and operational excellence\nWhat We’re Looking For\nCore Engineering Strength\n Strong Python and SQL \n Deep experience with Spark and modern data platforms (Databricks / Snowflake) \n Solid grasp of cloud data services (AWS or GCP) \nArchitecture & Design Judgement\nDemonstrated ownership of large-scale data platform architectures \nStrong data modelling skills and architectural decision-making ability \nComfortable balancing trade-offs between performance, cost, and complexity\nData Platform Experience\n Built and operated large-scale data pipelines in production \n Strong data modelling capability and architectural judgement \n Comfortable with multiple storage technologies and formats \nEngineering Discipline\n Infrastructure-as-code experience (Terraform, Pulumi) \n CI/CD pipelines using tools like GitHub Actions, ArgoCD \n Data testing and quality frameworks (dbt, Great Expectations, Soda) \nDelivery & Consulting Mindset\nExperience in consulting or professional services environments \nStrong consulting instincts - able to challenge assumptions and guide clients toward better outcomes \nComfortable mentoring senior engineers and influencing technical culture\nBenefits\nWhy Simple Machines\n You’ll work on interesting, high-impact problems \n You’ll build modern platforms, not maintain legacy mess \n You’ll be surrounded by senior engineers who actually know their craft \n You’ll have autonomy, influence, and room to grow \nIf you’re a Principal Data Engineer or Technical Lead that's based in Poland who wants to build properly, think clearly, and deliver real outcomes - we should talk.","description_format":"text","description_chars":4614,"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":[{"name":"Poland","iso":"PL","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Analytics & BI Consulting","Data Engineering & Migration Services"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-13T15:31:44Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":86,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.86,"p_room":1,"age_days":0,"expected_fill_days":27,"reasons":["conf:2","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-10-13T21:35:43Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/simplemachines-principal-data-engineer-2","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/simplemachines-principal-data-engineer-2.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-13T21:35:43Z","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":33077,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-14T00:00:00Z"}},"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":720743},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=720743"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fsimplemachines-principal-data-engineer-2"},{"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%2Fsimplemachines-principal-data-engineer-2"},{"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%2Fsimplemachines-principal-data-engineer-2"},{"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/simplemachines-principal-data-engineer-2\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fsimplemachines-principal-data-engineer-2"}]}